Bloodlust
by Evilgoddss
Summary: Fell's Church has been quiet for the past 3 years, but things are changing sharp and fast. Tragically, Bonnie has been left alone to deal with a new evil. Until Damon Salvatore saunters into town.
1. Prologue

The Prologue

_**...Time Stands Still...**_

by Anya (aka Evilgoddss)

Ever since the night Elena had been restored to him, Stefan had deeply buried the memories of Klaus' rampages with the hope of never again seeing the like again. Now, they were all rushing back. Elena whimpered softly, her fingers gripping onto his hand with a panicked intensity, and her body pressing closely to his side. She was beyond speaking, beyond voicing her terror, but both knew they understand one another. The house was in ruins, blood washed walls, furniture and floors, and the bodies lay scattered about like discarded dolls. Glassy eyes stared back, silently screaming their pain.

"This is interesting!" Ahead of them, a bright voice called herself out, completely unfazed by the violence and gore surrounding her. Stefan started in horror, his troubled dark eyes taken in a slender girl he knew well, crouched beside one poor dismembered child. She was so at ease, calmly surrounded by carnage with no apparent discomfort. For one brief moment, Stefan closed his eyes, willing his stomach not to lurch, before he looked at her again, this time noticing the angle of her head, and posture. Following her gaze upwards, he cringed.

_'The ice is thin come on dive in  
underneath my lucid skin  
the cold is lost, forgotten  
Hours pass days pass time stands still  
light gets dark & darkness fills  
my secret hate forbidden..." _

"At least he's lyrically inclined." She observed absently, as if to someone else nearby "Obscure quotes would be worse.". Thoughtfully she tilted her head, long gloriously bright hair swept down her back, very nearly falling into one of the puddles of blood on the floor. "He's changed one word, though. I think he was stretching."

"Ignoring your blatant sexism, cara… what album?" Stefan flinched, as another well-known speaker called out. Descending from the upper floor with a jump, rather than trusting the stairs, he prowled lazily into Stefan's line of sight. "It's not old." A very familiar predator to Stefan, his lithe movements were reminiscent of a panther. Black clothing accented the pure darkness of his hair, and made the black eyes gleam.

Turning, Damon Salvatore gave his young brother a mocking salute.

"Canadian." The girl responded, absently reaching out to close the dead child's eyes. "Sarah McLachlan, from the Fumbling to Ecstasy album. I think it's the album name we'll want to catalogue, not the lyrics."

"Of course." Damon purred silkily, his eyes still fixed on Stefan and Elena. "I think you might want to take a break, Bonnie. We have company."

-----------------------------

Elena watched Bonnie rub her hands together furiously, the antibacterial soap in her palm lathering up thickly and spreading all over. The sheer normalacy of Bonnie's movements made it seem like this was a routine event, that she nightly came home, washed all the blood, all the gore, and all the death from her body, and then moved on with the trauma forgotten.

'I want to forget.' Elena thought, stifling back a wave of hysteria. Looking across the kitchen, she met Meredith's understanding gaze, before turning back to Bonnie. How could someone change so completely in two months? 'Our fault. We left, and she was alone.'

"I wasn't, you know. Not completely, at least." Bonnie said simply, her head still bent and examining the state of her palms. Turning her hands over, she studied her nails, picking at something beneath the nail bed on one hand with a nailbrush, and rinsing once again. Her manicure had never looked so good in all her life as it did now.

Meredith arched one perfect eyebrow in confusion. "Wasn't what, Bonnie?" Watching Stefan and Elena walk in the door with Bonnie and Damon in tow behind them had been quite the experience. Two years ago, Damon Salvatore had turned away from an offer of friendship and acceptance and disappeared. Meredith Sulez had thought she'd never see that man again. Actually, she had hoped never to see him again.

"Alone." The redhead finished simply, shaking water drops off her hands before reaching for a towel. "I had plenty of company after you left." There was no incrimination in her voice, but there was also no care for what they did or hadn't done.

Elena stared at Meredith helplessly, raising her shoulders in a shrug. 'Your turn!' The blond mouthed at the Asian girl. Meredith's mask of calm efficiency nearly dissolved, faint cracks appearing as Elena turned away. "When - when did Damon come back?" Meredith managed to ask, pleased that her voice didn't crack.

It was a logical question, she decided. In determining the time of Damon's return, they could pinpoint the cause of Bonnie's behaviour and, hopefully, reverse it. 'Oh, Alaric. I wish you'd come back with us!' Meredith wished silently, convinced the parapsychologist would have some insights on the situation. It was as if Bonnie had become an extension of Damon. Cold, very calculating in every action and completely indifferent to the people around her. What had happened to her?

Bonnie turned, leaning lazily against the counter rim, here dark eyes dancing with amusement. "I grew up, Meredith. I didn't become a cold, calculating monster. I just grew up and faced some realities. I coped with the situation. I was in danger, and I had to save myself." She paused, head tilting slightly, "You really shouldn't be so hard on Damon. It's not like you even really know the man."

THAT was annoying, Meredith decided. It was like Bonnie was reading their minds. Inexplicably, Bonnie suddenly smirked, pushing away from the sink. Walking towards the door behind Meredith's back, she paused beside her long-time childhood friend, and bent towards Meredith's ear.

"Who said I wasn't?" Bonnie whispered with a smile. Straightening, she flashed a smile at Elena, and pushed the door open. Even from the kitchen, the faint sound of the Salvatore boys arguing was clear, but once the door was open, their shouts were clear as day.

Elena and Meredith hadn't immediately followed her, Bonnie realized feeling the hallway behind her empty. Apparently, they felt the need to consult each other and compare notes. Once upon a time, that discussion would have included her as an active participant, not the subject. Ah well. After all these weeks of being alone with just Damon for support, being surrounded by her friends was leaving her on edge. Leaning against a wall, near the opening of the living room, she could see Damon sitting on the window edge, looking completely at ease in the verbal battlefield.

Stefan, Bonnie noticed, was pacing back and forth in front of his older brother, like some sort of caged animal. 'Eight weeks ago, I would have supported Stefan's side blindly.' Bonnie marveled at herself. It was incredible just how much of her world perception had changed.

"At least I didn't abandon her!" Damon retorted, making Bonnie realize how much greater HIS worldview had changed. Seven weeks ago, he had sauntered back into town with no concern for anyone beyond himself, and maybe, just maybe, Stefan. One attack, and several more sites of carnage like tonight had really changed them both. Still, it was nice to have someone defend her, and support her when she'd all but given up on her survival.

"We didn't abandon her!" Stefan protested.

"No? Did she ask you to stay? Did she tell you of her nightmares? Her visions? Did you listen?" Damon accused harshly. He already knew the answer to this, but Bonnie knew he was using his knowledge as a weapon to prove a point, not to hurt anyone. Stefan, sadly, would never realize that was his brother's motivation.

On the upside, Stefan was one of those poor benighted souls that couldn't tell a lie. No matter how he tried, he couldn't lie. He could tell superficial truths, but he could not out and out lie. It wasn't in his nature. "That's not the point. I'm supposed to cancel our plans because of Bonnie's nightmares?"

Bonnie winced. That really hadn't been the most tactful response, she murmured silently to herself, watching Damon's face darken. Damon was a good-guy in denial, in her opinion, though she knew better than to share it with him. He steadfastly claimed to be bad to the core, but if you were a friend, or an ally, he would take a stake for you. Or feed you his own blood knowing the risk of responsibility that could potentially follow.

"Yes." He hissed. "You should. She saved your life, or have you forgotten lying on your back with a stake in your chest and Klaus prancing about you in victory?" He stood up, now, the posture of calm indifference falling away in the wake of fury. He stalked towards his little brother like a jaguar ready to rip the throat out of the chosen prey. "Have you forgotten that she was psychic? Possibly the most powerful psychic you or I have ever encountered in our entire existence? That she managed to summon us to Fell's Church as a rank amateur, that she summoned Elena's spirit and the host of dead?"

"Elena did that..." Stefan protested weakly, taking backward steps as Damon advanced.

The other vampire just moved closer, his dark eyes black holes, and lips pulled away from his elongated teeth in a snarl. "Spare me. Elena summoned the host through Bonnie's power. The true dead have no power, and you well KNOW that."

"I -"

"ABANDONED her!" Damon roared, his hands shooting out to grab and bury into Stefan's shirt. He gave his brother a fierce shake. "And you want to accuse me of something? Look after your own sins first, little brother. They're far more grievous than my own. "

Bonnie sighed, hearing the door behind her open in response to Damon's bellow. 'Just as it was getting interesting. There really isn't anymore good daytime drama. Ah well.' She pushed off the wall she was leaning on and stepped briskly into the room. One quick glance had Damon release his brother, and another had Stefan shut his mouth with an audible click. "Done playing?" She asked sweetly, giving both men another sweeping and stern look advising they stuck to their best behaviour.

Each nodded mutely, Stefan sheepish, Damon contained. Feeling Elena moving behind her, Bonnie walked across the room towards the fireplace, and sat down on the stone trim about the hearth. Daintily, she crossed one leg over the other, and waited for everyone else to assume their positions. "Where's Matt?" She asked socially, with a light tone of complete indifference given that she already suspected the answer.

Elena looked at Stefan, who glanced at Meredith, nominating her as speaker. "He, ah, took Kiera home." Meredith pinched at the bridge of her nose, apparently expecting some adverse reaction from those words.

Bonnie smirked. "Oh, how nice." She commented, completely insincerely. Kiera Keith had moved into Fell's Church precisely two weeks to the day after Klaus had been defeated, and Matt had dropped Bonnie like a hot potato. He was completely enthralled by the blonde girl, and had no time to spare on his loose-wheel friends. "So, did you all have fun in Europe? Maybe let Kiera in the club? Did you tell her your nasty little secrets and show her the hidden handshake?"

Another look was exchanged, but this time Stefan spoke, his eyes fixed on Damon the entire time. "No. She doesn't need to know, so we aren't telling her."

Damon snorted, but made no other comment. Head tilted back, he was studying the swirls of plaster on the ceiling as if it were the most fascinating display of art he'd ever seen. As engrossing and consuming of his thought as the smile on the Mona Lisa was to an art major.

"Meredith had asked when you'd come back to town." Bonnie continued airily, glancing at Damon. "I thought I'd wait until we were all together before we had that discussion."

Damon's head slowly tilted back down, his eyes meeting and holding hers for a long silent moment. "I see." Dark eyes narrowed slightly. "This should be fun."

Meredith was studying them with cool analytical eyes. Bonnie could feel her weighing the evidence and leaping to conclusions. Some of them, Bonnie smirked, might even be right. "We're all here, now." Meredith said quietly. "Perhaps we could begin?"

Damon leaned back into his chair, now totally relaxed. "Perhaps." He agreed congenially. "Ask your questions, and _perhaps_ we'll be forthcoming." They had all the time in the world for this, he and Bonnie. More or less. Until the next attack happened. They'd already lost this evening for tracking down their little pet monster when Stefan and Elena had walked onto the scene. It would go to ground before morning, and possibly stay there until it's hunger roused it again in another fifteen to twenty hours. Plenty of time to deal with Stefan and Elena.

"How long have you been back in Fell's Church?" Stefan shot the question off directly, either ignoring or ignorant of Elena's gentle hand on his arm encouraging calm.

Damon glanced back at Bonnie, "Seven weeks?" He speculated.

The redhead shrugged. "There about. The first attack was almost nine weeks ago." Leaning back, she let the solid brass guard of the fireplace be the support for her body's reclining weight. Brown eyes flicked to the ceiling, her expression thoughtful. "Give or take a few days, I'd say seven weeks is about right."

Elena's rosebud lips parted in shock. "Oh, my God!" She exclaimed, her finger's sliding down to clutch at Stefan's hand. "Why didn't you call!"

"Why didn't you stay when I asked?" Bonnie countered rhetorically, in a neutral voice. "Why didn't you listen to me, or my predictions? Why was it so easy to blow me off, and ignore my visions?"

"We were expected to cancel a planned event based on a few dreams?" Meredith argued impassively. "Please be realistic, Bonnie."

Cold dead eyes, far more distant and fearsome than Damon's shifted to the Asian girl. "Oh, I am being realistic, Meredith. So realistic that I knew you would not have come if I had called. I had the proof of that in the weeks before you even left."

"You don't know that!" Stefan insisted. "We..."

"Weren't given the chance." Damon inserted smoothly. "Yes, yes. I believe that is already understood. Your previous actions, however, illustrate your lack of faith in both of us. Why should we have faith in you?" Without any urgency in the motions, he stood, smoothly shrugging out of his jacket and spreading it over the back of a chair.

Smiling, as if amused, he continued without looking at anyone. "Furthermore, you've already played judge and jury in the last two hours. As far as you are all concerned, with the notable exception of Bonnie, I am the killer here. I am the darkness over Fell's Church that waited for you all to depart before I went on a serial spree to make Jack the Ripper seem amateur." Returning to his seat, he tossed the threesome opposite him a mocking smile. "And, of course, my association with Bonnie is to throw you all of the right track, and as a bonus for me to gain access to her sweet little jugular."

Bonnie snorted, uncrossing her legs. Pulling the limbs into a sharp angle, she was like a beautiful gargoyle ready for flight. Dark red hair fell across the side of her face like a curtain, obscuring Stefan and Elena's view of her features.

Stefan frowned, the worry in his face unmistakable. "Have you?"

It was Bonnie who sprang up from her sitting posture, now very angry. Stalking towards the windows, she put her back and several meters between herself and her former friends. "What kind of question is that, Stefan Salvatore?" Hands, slim and pale, reached into the sheer curtains, tangling in them with such surprising violence. "Has Damon accused you of snacking off Elena? Or sharing blood with her?"

Damon glanced sharply at his brother and pseudo-sister-in law. Eyelids drooping lazily over his dark gaze, he almost smiled. 'Bonnie doesn't miss much, indeed.' The signs were unmistakable, the heightened brightness in Elena's eyes, and the slight change in her body temperature. Although, on a purely non-supernatural level, the silk scarf in the middle of summer was an obvious sign. "I don't even need to ask." He agreed silkily. "Do I, Stefan."

Elena shook her head, "What occurs between Stefan and I isn't important!" Her sweet voice rang out clear as a bell. "We want to know what's going on, here! Why you were at that... that... house, why Bonnie was with you, and what you're doing back in town!"

"Is that all?" Damon asked, vastly amused. "The answers, in order, are: because the killer attacked there, Bonnie found the site, and I was asked to come back." Standing, he brushed imaginary dust off his jeans, before clapping those hands together. "So, now if that's all, I believe Bonnie and I have some work to finish."

"Like Hell!" Stefan jumped up.

Bonnie chose that moment to spin away from the window, "Excuse me?" Her voice rose incredulously, but quietly.

"You're not going anywhere with him!" Stefan reaffirmed, his soul's white knight turning him into a chauvinist. "Not alone."

"I've been alone with him for seven straight weeks. While you were nowhere around, I was crawling around the bloodiest murder sites I've ever seen, closing the eyes of dead children, and counting body parts. I was looking for messages written in blood without knowing if the killer was nearby or not... and all the while I was in danger because I was with Damon?"

Intelligently, there was no answer Stefan could give, and everyone in the room knew it. Burning eyes glared up at his older brother, his fury at the awkward situation he was in, at the frustration of suspecting is brother was up to something and at the uselessness he felt was making his grip on his temper fragile.

Damon stared impassively back. "You have some say in Elena's actions, my brother." The vampire advised easily, "And you may have influence on Meredith by right what she allows, but do not presume to dictate the actions of others who have remained behind and fought to survive."

Meredith felt her skin rise, appalled by the turn of events. The way Damon seemed so righteously against them, it was like stepping into the twilight zone. He was the monster here, a killer with no conscience, and yet he was guilt-tripping them. Glancing at Bonnie, her goosebumps seemed to develop goosebumps. 'What happened here? What changed you, Bonnie?' She found herself thinking again.

"Everything that happened can't be explained. Won't be explained." Bonnie replied shortly, again as if Meredith had spoke her thoughts aloud. "And it..." The girl's voice trailed off suddenly, her head twisting to look back at the windows, a growing alarm spreading across her face.

It was like watching a slow motion film, Meredith realized in a daze, as Bonnie turned and took one step towards the window. Fragments of a seconds seemed to stretch out into minutes from the start of her actions the twisting of her body into a new direction and flow of her steps. But, Bonnie had scarcely taken a single step when the window shattered inwards, and a large bloody bundle dropped to the floor inches from Bonnie's feet.

The moment passed with Elena's scream. And while staring sightlessly at the bundle, Meredith began to realize it wasn't a bundle of rags that soaked into the carpets, but a terribly mangled body. Straggling blond hair caked with blood stuck to a blood-streaked gray face, dead eyes wide open and lips parted in a silent scream. The abdomen was ripped open with a huge jagged 'Y' incision, the organs and innards missing.

Bonnie scarcely gave the corpse a look. Ignoring the shouts of protest, she jumped over it, vaulting through the window without pause. Darting out into the night air, past the protections of the home, she paused, looking about for any sign of the killer. Nighttime chirps of crickets and the rich smell of the earth filled the air around her, masking even the scent of blood that had surrounded the body that now decorating Bonnie's living room.

Eyes narrowed, looking down at nothing in particular. It was odd, reaching out with other senses, but the strangeness of doing so was wearing off with each occasion that she made the effort. At first, it had seemed so hard, but now changing from depending on her human senses to the heightened instincts born of her own natural powers was so easy, but still odd.

The presence lingered, but felt weaker as if it was gone. Unless it was capable of hiding itself in this manner, it had already left after dropping off its little lovenote. That was the annoyance in this hunt, that neither Damon or Bonnie had been able to obtain a clear mark. The poems and carnage were reminiscent of Klaus, although Bonnie was convinced it wasn't the Ancient committing these murders.

"Bonnie, get back here!" Stefan was shouting, his voice becoming louder as he stepped outside of the house. "Klaus could be out here, still."

Bonnie tossed a look over her shoulder, rolling her eyes at the melodramatics. "It's not Klaus." She replied, almost amused. "And it's gone."

"You don't know that." Stefan insisted, his eyes scanning the darkness anxiously. A flash of yellow seemed to move behind Bonnie, and then disappeared. "Please, Bonnie..."

Bonnie froze, some instinct shouting warning. Bonnie dropped down to a crouch, throwing one leg back and turning swiftly, the extended limb acting like a tripwire. Feeling the presence behind her fall, she jumped back up, leveling a sharp kick to the midsection and following up with a kick to the head.

"BONNIE!"

Klaus grinned up at the redhead, blood trickling from his nose. "Miss me?" He taunted. "I'll kill you first, girly. A thank you for what you did to me. And then I'll rip the hearts out of those boys." His long duster, ragged now, hung about lank shoulders. Even with hands reaching out like talons, there was a tremendous loss in muscle that could easily be identified. The wastage an assumed byproduct of two years in his prison.

Stefan ran to intervene, throwing his body between Klaus and Bonnie. Knees bent, fists raised, the younger vampire snarled baring his teeth to the Ancient in defiance.

Bonnie shook her head in disgust, judiciously taking a few steps back from the two fighters. She spared a quick glance back to the house, noting Damon was standing on the porch ready to intervene. With one hand, she waved him off, while the rest of her turning back to witness Klaus easily backhand Stefan

The younger vampire was weak, in vampiric terms. He habitually abstained from human blood, despite the apparent nibbles on his lovely Elena's neck, he still primarily fed on animal blood. The noble spirit was simply not well paired with the weaker body it inhabited.

"My turn, again." Bonnie murmured, wincing as Stefan landed in a particularly healthy wild rose bush. Boldly, she waited for Klaus to approach her, the gold in his eyes nearly as bright as the gleam of his teeth.

The hands reached out again like claws, but the only purchase he achieved was that of Bonnie's foot in his chest. The kick had strength to it, and was followed up with her knee to his groin. "Did you really think I'd fall for this?" Bonnie asked absently, the question not intended for Klaus.

Klaus roared defiance, his arm swinging to punch her in the stomach. Bonnie didn't really try to avoid the blow, but her hands shot out to catch his wrist as if it was a lever, his own momentum then able to steer her body to the side.

"You." She continued, her nails digging deep into an emaciated wrist. "Or more precisely, the real you is still imprisoned. I know this, the bastard that created you knows this, and only Stefan over there hasn't figured it out."

'Klaus' shrugged off her hands, turning to face her. "Really?" He taunted, opening his mouth to flash fangs at her. "Are you so sure?" Hands reached out to clutch her neck. "I feel real to me."

With his hands so occupied, he never had a chance to protect himself. Thrusting from her shoulders, she let her right hand curve into a spoon, slicing into 'Klaus'' chest and wrapping around his heart. With a savage jerk, she ripped the dead organ out, still cradling it her hand.

The Ancient's mouth worked in silent horror, the edges of his form fading rapidly with the heart outside of his body. A scream, ghostly for the lack of sound in it, echoed as the apparition faded with the heart in Bonnie's hand winking out of existence last.

Glancing over at the rose bushes, she smiled insincerely at Stefan, noting how the thorns had made a mess of his leather jacket. "And that concludes today's lessons on constructs." The sweetness of her voice at odds with the scene that had just past. "It was just to distract you."

"But..."

Bonnie shook her head, walking back to the house with even steps. Meeting Damon's eyes, she shrugged. "Stefan mentioned Klaus, so our unwelcome visitor constructed Klaus for our amusement."

Damon nodded agreement. "So, he's a sorcerer in his spare time."

"Possibly." Bonnie frowned, looking past Damon to the dead body covered by a blanket. Bonnie and Meredith were standing clear away from it, studiously avoiding looking at the widening stain on the fabric and carpet. "But why wait until now to demonstrate that? And how did he know so much about Klaus to build something so realistic?"

Damon frowned, eyes staring down the street. "We are missing something key."

Stefan stomped onto the porch, pushing his way to stand between his brother and Bonnie. The dead body in the house disturbed him only in the sense it was a murder. The actual sight of death or the dead didn't upset him nearly as much as the cause of death. It was a wrong he'd been unable to prevent, in his eyes.

"It's from the house we were at earlier tonight." Bonnie tried to soothe him gently, her first act of kindness that evening. "There was nothing any of us could have done."

Stefan gaped at her. "You can't know that!"

Damon smiled, like a cat that'd caught the canary. "This is not the first time, little brother. Bonnie has been receiving these types of gifts for weeks now. Each one has been someone missing from the murder scene."

Elena and Meredith both choked. "Weeks?" Stefan asked, dark eyes wide with horror.

Bonnie shrugged, inured to these surprise presents by now. They still disgusted her, but the reality of the situation was that screaming would not stop another from arriving. Only hunting down the killer and destroying him or her would do that. "Yeah." She affirmed. "This is the first time it's been in my apartment, though. I guess I need to improve the wards."

Stefan glanced at Elena, noting the glazed look in her blue eyes. "I don't understand." He admitted, choosing to let his antagonism at Damon slide, for now. "Why is he so interested in you?"

Damon flicked a glance at Bonnie, "Why does a cat bring its owner dead mice?" Damon answered for her. Stepping back through the window, he approached the remains. Carefully bending down, he rolled the blanket around it, like that of a mummy, and then picked the bloody burden up. "It's a form of love."

Elena whimpered, looking away from Damon and staring at Bonnie. "But, why you?"

Bonnie shrugged, stepping wide as Damon stepped outside of the house, still carrying the corpse. "Why me?" She sighed. "I'm the victim that got away. It wants what can't have."


	2. Chapter One

Part One

_**...Something Wicked This Way Came...**_

by Anya (aka Evilgoddss)

"Two boxes left." Bonnie grumbled, staring at the open hatch of her 1994 Honda Civic. "Just two more boxes, and then I can relax." It was funny how after hefting the other fifteen boxes, these remaining two seemed like such a titanic effort. Of course, she could have set her moving date prior to Elena and Meredith's European hike, but that would have made sense.

'Face it, McCullough.' She grimaced, dragging the larger of the two towards her. Bending with her knees, she lifted the box, juggling it until it was comfortable in her arms. 'You were so steamed that they took Matt and Kiera instead of you that you wouldn't have asked for their help even if they were in town.'

It wasn't jealousy, precisely, that made her teeth grind together at the mere thought of Kiera Keith. There was something indefinable about the other girl that made the hair at the back of Bonnie's neck rise. The blond and her father had arrived in Fell's Church two weeks after Klaus had been imprisoned.

Smart, pretty and vapid, it had taken Kiera all of ten minutes to remove Matt from Bonnie's side and wrap him about her little finger. Tall, slim and perky, she was the perfect personal cheerleader for the former Football hero.

And she made Bonnie's skin crawl. Her sweet little smile seemed to turn nasty when it was directed in her direction, and there was no cause, no reason for it. 'Except jealousy, if I listen to Elena.'

Perhaps that was what created the division between herself and her friends, not Kiera, but Bonnie's refusal to listen to Elena over her own common sense. 'Mom always said Independent Thought was the death of my infancy. Wonder when I stopped thinking for myself and let Elena think for me?'

A short chuckle tore loose of her throat. It was so easy to be critical of others, and not look to herself for the initial failing. Lacking in friends, self-confidence and Elena's cool looks, Bonnie had willingly succumbed to Elena's dominance all those years ago. The fault was hers, for not keeping her independence, and no one else's.

It had been so nice, all those years ago, to walk into the schoolyard with Elena beside her. The kids hadn't jeered at her tiny size or red hair, the transference of Elena's glory to Bonnie was just so smooth. Suddenly, her long fine hair was in vogue, her fondness for black patent shoes became cool, and giggling was a normal thing.

In Highschool, to be the escort of a Princess of Elena's court was the highest achievement any teenage male could achieve. There had been no short supply of dates for the milestone events of her adolescent years. Indeed, Bonnie had been one of the first girls of her age group in Fell's Church to have a boyfriend. It went hand in hand, Elena's will ruled all aspects of life.

Katherine and Klaus had changed that to some degree, but they had not nearly the impact Bonnie's Scottish family had made. Those weeks in Scotland, with her grandmother and her friends had shaken the mould from Bonnie's body and let her see the world with her own eyes and her own mind. What a revelation that had been, to see a child wearing torn jeans with a sloppy t-shirt and not criticize, but smile in recognition that climbing a tree was more fun than watching someone else do so.

Returning, after that magical summer, to Fell's Church had been awkward. She had been trying to crawl back into the shell Elena had constructed for her, but found the fit was all wrong. Still, Bonnie had tried. 'Until Elena died. There isn't a wakeup call like that.'

Sighing, Bonnie shook her head, clearing cobwebs. Those events were three years ago, and there was no point dwelling on them further. The point was, she was her own woman now, her own thoughts, goals and determinations set the course of her life. 'Gods help the man I marry.' She chuckled.

Juggling the box, to get a firmer grip, she lightly walked up the three steps to her mainfloor apartment. Bonnie still couldn't quite believe her luck in finding this place, the building had been such a steal. The monthly cost was so low that it easily allowed her to attend her last year of classes and live comfortably under a restricted budget.

The habit resulting out of Elena's death, of writing a diary, had evolved into writing short stories and from there into writing novels. Last summer, she had sent out a finished novel to a publisher's agent, just on a lark. Her surprise had been tremendous when the fiction had been accepted. The editing had taken five months, but the book was on bookshelves in stores across the country now, and her while not lavish earnings had been enough to pay for another year of school.

With a second book in editing now, and a third in rough draft, Bonnie's agent was confident that there was financial security in Bonnie's writing ability. 'Thank you, Goddess!' Bonnie smiled, using her foot to kick her apartment door wider. 'Imagine if I had to work in a store, or in a restaurant? The first stray thought and I'd go ballistic.'

Her psychic abilities had blossomed tremendously since the defeat of Klaus. So much so, that if she were caught in a crowd, unless she carefully guarded her mind, the thoughts of the people around her would overwhelm her senses. Each joy, sorrow, triviality or horror that the people could imagine would swamp her mind. It was vertigo unlike any other, and once begun it couldn't be filtered out. In order for mental stability, Bonnie had to enter a crowd or public place with mental shields, or not go at all. She had to gird her mind each day with a fresh new armor, and hope nothing came slamming at her shields to knock them down.

All that made this apartment building just perfectly suited for her. There were only five units in the entire complex, three of them occupied by senior couples. The fourth had a young family, but since it was on the top floor, Bonnie felt no concern for the presence of children's minds. And oddly enough each individual unit was warded. 'So, either the landlord was a psychic, or a previous resident was. Funny, we don't even have tarot readers in Fell's Church, so I wonder who it could have been?'

Setting the box down in her new kitchen, Bonnie glanced quickly over the unit with pride. A small two bedroom apartment, with a nice size kitchenette and living room, it was the perfect first home. The extra bedroom would be eventually converted into a guest- room/office. A guestroom should she have a guest, but a quiet place for her to write and do her work for school.

Even the stark white walls seemed perfect. 'Perfect for painting, you mean!' She laughed silently, already deciding on deep hunter green paint to compliment the hardwood flooring. The large picture window that let so much light in would welcome the rich colours, she knew, and it would quickly create a homey feel.

"Yeah, yeah. it'll look marvelous." Bonnie shook her head. "You're procrastinating! Go get the last box, lock up the car and start unpacking!" Brushing at her jeans, trying to scoot away some of the dust that always seem to accommodate boxes, no matter how new or clean, she straightened and made for the door with determination.

The last box was going to be a doozy. Her mother had given her all those cast-iron pots and pans that had been Grams. They were so heavy, but so terrific for cooking. or casting, depending on what you were mixing up. Loading them into her Hatchback had been brutal, and lifting them out would be worse.

"Be a woman, not a wuss." She muttered, stalking down the stairs. "How bad can it be?" Less than a minute later, with a giant "wooof" as air rushed from her lungs, she knew exactly how bad it would be. Tired muscles protested at the abuse, but her willpower hung on. One step, two step, three -- pausing, Bonnie rested the box on the metal banister of the stairs and breathed deeply. Just three steps up, two steps across and then who KNEW how far into the kitchen and she could relax. Perhaps she'd sit on the couch and never get up again.

Tucking her hands at the bottom corners of the box, she braced to lift. A flicker of motion above her made her pause. Looking over her shoulder she saw one of her elderly neighbours step down the stairs with a garbage bag in hand. "Hi Mrs. Rundle!" Bonnie called by way of greeting. "Nice evening, isn't it?"

The woman was eighty if a day and even tinier than Bonnie. Where Bonnie was tiny but strong, Mrs. Rundle was tiny and very fragile looking. The skin nearly white showed all those fine blue veins in her hands and arms. The slightest bump into her would likely create a huge bruise if not break bones.

"Bonnie, dear!" The old woman smiled sweetly. She was such a grandmotherly type. "Shouldn't you have a young man hefting those dreadful boxes around? You might hurt your back!"

Bonnie chuckled, bending knees and lifting the box once the woman was below her. "There's a short supply of helpful young men in the world, Mrs. Rundle. All the good ones are gone, and only the slobs that would sit on the couch and watch football are left behind."

Mrs. Rundle smiled, dimples flashing. "Oh dear, there speaks a woman of the world!" She laughed a merry cheerful sound. "Off you go, before you hurt yourself."

The smile in Bonnie's eye was genuine, just as the grimace on her face was to the weight of her burden. Persevering, she entered the apartment and then fell to pieces. "Close enough." She muttered, depositing the cookware in the entryway. "I'll unpack you from here. One darn piece at a time!"

Swinging her leg, she administered a scornful kick to the evil box, yelping as her toes shrieked protest. 'Evil nasty box!' With a slight hobble, she returned to the apartment entrance and down the stairs, absently patting down her coat in endless search for car keys. One of these days, she would own a car with that remote keyless entry stuff, but for now, the old manual key-required style of car was the only one she could afford.

The car served her well, though. With low mileage on it, and fuel economy beyond her wildest fantasies, it was an economical and comfortable vehicle. Sure, it would never compare to the absolute sexy sleekness of Damon's black Ferrari, but it was enough. 'Damon, huh. Wonder what he's driving now.' That car was one of her biggest regrets, in that she had never gotten a ride in it. With the window open, her red hair loose and sunglasses on, it would have been a Kodak moment.

'Oh well. Damon always brought too much excitement to Fell's Church. I rather like this quiet peace. No one's dying, no one's being butchered or tortured. This is much nicer.' Bonnie sighed, trying to see the good in the peace but only feeling stifled by the sheer boredom of the town. 'Oh my kingdom for a spot of excitement.'

Rounding the corner, she looked up and screamed.

Blood dripped off the edges of the car's hood, and the windshield was completely smashed in with the weight of Mrs. Rundle's slaughtered body. The old woman's head was twisted at an unholy angle, her terrified blue eyes open and frozen in death.

Her body curled up, and Bonnie clutched one hand over her mouth and another balled into her stomach, trying to stave back a gag reflex. Bonnie didn't miss the degree of trauma on the woman's body. Blood was splattered everywhere with bits and pieces of human flesh and organs. Something had torn into the woman, ripping her deep from chin to tummy, and leaving a gapping maw of dead organs openly exposed for viewing. "No.No.No.No." Bonnie keened, stepping backwards until her body was against a brick wall. "No. Please no."

Shaking her head violently, Bonnie tore her eyes away, looking up to see a red moon hanging heavily low in the sky, as round, as luminously bloody as her dreams had promised. The nightmares weren't nightmares. They were visions. A promise of a future to come.

She was going to die.

---------------------------

Hours later, the police left towing her car away with apologies. The vehicle was needed for forensic testing, to determine details of the murder. Sitting frozen on her cluttered couch, Bonnie could care less. Her mind was trapped with the initial image of poor Mrs. Rundle sprawled across her car's hood, with an expression of unholy terror etched forever on her sweet face.

"My fault." Bonnie found herself whispering, arms wrapping tightly about her. Her visions were always somewhat vague, but not that one. Three weeks ago, she'd dreamt of a faceless corpse on her car, blood drizzling down and a full red moon hanging in the background. From there, the dream had progressed to a shapeless black thing giving the whispery promise that it was all for her.

Shivering, she tucked her knees up closer, curling in on herself until she could tighten up no more. Listening to Stefan and Elena dismiss her dreams as nothing more than a nightmare of no consequence had lulled her, making her careless. But, oh, how she wished they had been right.

Nothing in the universe, not surviving Klaus, or witnessing Elena's resurrection as a vampire could prepare her for the vision of her own death. A bloody horrible and painful death in a dark, cold place with no one around her and no one to miss her. That dream had been the catalyst for her sudden move from home to the apartment. For three nights straight, while her parents were in Vegas, Bonnie had woken screaming at the top of her lungs. And every time, it had been at the exact same moment, just as a claw tore threw her throat silencing her voice in death.

The smell of her blood almost had taste to it. Rich, metallic and heavy in dank air, Bonnie had felt the trickling slide weeping from gaping cuts, had felt the sting and weakness inherent in the process of being butchered to pieces, and had felt the futility of escape.

Those were just dreams. Reality was apparently far worse. 'Why me?' She moaned plaintively. ;I just wanted a normal life. I wanted to get married, have children, dance the funky chicken at my 75th birthday. Normal things.' Shuddering, she stared blankly at white walls.

The only light in her darkness was that nothing predicted was carved in stone. The slightest variable could change the future, but nothing could alter the past. There was a new evil in Fell's Church, and she was alone to deal with it.

Her eyes slid to the phone sitting on the fireplace hearth, the expression in her face wistful. Once upon a time, she would have called Elena and found aid. Now, she doubted help was coming. They'd made their feelings clear, hadn't they? The disbelief that anything could happen in Fell's Church? That Bonnie had prescient skills, or that she was promising a darkness upon this town unlike anything Klaus could commit. "I'm alone." Her voice sounded tiny in the huge space of her apartment. Closing her eyes, she reached out with the only strength she had left, her faith. "Gods, I don't want to die. Please. But, I don't want anyone else to die too. So, please, if you've ever spared me a thought, help me?"


	3. Chapter Two

Part Two

_**...And the Children Did Scream ...**_

by Anya (aka Evilgoddss)

The morning after the first attack broke with the news of the night's atrocity scampering through the town, before the local paper could even print it. It had always amused Bonnie just how far behind on local news that Fell's Daily Herald was, gossip spread infinitely faster.

Three days later, Bonnie found herself stepping briskly down the steps of the police station. Tucking her hands into the pockets of her light summer jacket, she sorted out her thoughts with slow deliberation. Head low and sunglasses concealing her eyes, she blended gratefully into the anonymity of the crowds.

Her initial statement, taken at the scene of the crime had been without any questions. As the investigating officer had said today, the degree of atrocity made to Mrs. Rundle was forensically outside of both Bonnie's height and weight. She would have to have grown another two feet and gain another one hundred and fifty pounds to have tossed the body into the car with equivalent force. Further, given the time of death and lack of blood on the witness, there was just no way Bonnie was anything but a bystander.

'Oh joy.' Bonnie sighed silently, pausing at a red traffic light with the rest of the pedestrians. 'I pity the cop that finds this perp.' Her dreams had once again been filled with darkness. Mingled in with visions of her own death had been a bus of slaughtered children, their fear still tangible in the dried tears on their horrified still faces. Sleep was getting harder and harder to achieve, with these visions crowding her head as soon as her eyes closed.

The murders would happen, Bonnie was sure of this, and it would happen soon. Tuesday night's dream had been brutal, the blood and darkness of death surrounding the bus, Wednesday night's dream far more detailed, the screams psychically engraved into the very air echoing through her body. Last night, though, the dream had been so intense she felt like a witness to the slaughter. Each cut, each tear, each savage bite into these poor kids was done as if she was right there. And this time, it wasn't just the psychic screams that assaulted her mind.

The only hope she had was that she could throw herself on the grenade first and distract the killer from the kids. "Masochistic much, McCullough?" She asked herself sarcastically. "Stefan and Elena have a noble streak, I'm the resident coward and it'd be awfully nice if I could remember this."

Masochistic or not her feet trod on heading straight for the perimeter of the cemetery. Honoria Fell had been a founder of Fell's Church, but her strength had been in that she was not just a woman but a witch. Her gifts had been widely used to protect and aid her fellow townspeople, and were likely the reason why the town had grown roots enough to survive.

Even in death, the woman's spirit had lingered to guard her town. It had been Honoria who had manipulated Bonnie's awakening sensitivities, and drawn her to the tombs, and it had been her ghost that had given Stefan and Elena their first chance to stop the horror that was occurring.

"I don't give a damn about eternal rewards, she better be feeling helpful." Bonnie muttered grimly, eyeing the mausoleum in the distance. The torch may have been passed on, but those who had fought before had a certain obligation to provide their wisdom to the next generation. "Which means Stefan should be here, not me."

Without even glancing down, Bonnie knew the instant she had passed Elena's empty grave and she continued, mindful of the world around her. Vampires were not constricted by sunlight. A charmed lapis lazuli, amongst other stones, represented more UV protectant than science could develop. "Not enough good eats in a graveyard, though." Bonnie muttered, thankful she had enough knowledge of vampire to rationalize why they wouldn't hunt from a cemetery.

A quick glance was tossed to the Smallwood Crypt, the stone orb at its height almost winking at her with the morning sun glinting off it. Tyler Smallwood had never been found, much less heard from. It suddenly occurred to her that, as a werewolf, he was capable of eviscerating a body. Shuddering, she walked towards an even more ancient resting-place that represented protection and not death.

Pushing past the heavy doors, her low-heeled shoes clicked with authority on the flooring inside the tombs. Two giant sepulchers with the effigies of both Honoria and her husband perched on top in prayer were positively medieval in representation. The town, all those years ago, had erected the graves to honour the town's founders, and this was the format chosen.

Stopping in front of Honoria's tomb, Bonnie took in the dust, and the harsh lines of the effigy. The woman carved in front of her had a severe look to her, her features frozen in stern reflection of the life ever-after. It didn't take much to push the cover aside, or to jump down into the tomb beneath.

"Hello, Honoria." Bonnie said to the apparently empty room. "I need your help, again." Silence greeted her words. Turning, slightly, Bonnie looked around the hollow, her eyes rapidly adjusting to the darkness. The wreckage that opened into the catacombs beneath the graveyard also served as a marker for Katherine's final assault on Fell's Church. It was here that she had abducted Elena, Stefan and Damon, and it was that abduction that began her downfall.

Just as it was this room, this tomb, that had set the course of Bonnie's own life. Her psychic abilities that had awoken the summer before were gentle, weak, and trivial. Honoria had offered a choice, to keep those gifts or loose them and in Bonnie's choice to retain them they had blossomed tremendously.

Where Honoria had simply been a powerfully gifted psychic, Bonnie had taken the path of witchcraft, using the skills and mediations of that discipline to help her control her powers. Besides, in a world where vampires associated with her on a daily basis, having occult skills was a life-saving skill. Her life.

By no means was she a strong or well-educated witch, she left that to the professionals. She was, however, sufficiently skilled to summon one recalcitrant spirit. "You're going to have to speak to me again, Honoria. Whether or not you've earned your rest, Fell's Church requires your aid."

Still, there was silence. Bonnie's eyes narrowed, long lashes covering dark eyes. "Twenty-three innocent children will die without your assistance." She murmured. "I don't know what it is out there, or where it is, or if I can stop it. I just know I'm alone without a clue."

Power stirred for the first time, the thrum of an ancient power moving in the air around her. With the power, came a presence. "Stefan and Elena left. They're on vacation. Your chosen guardians are gone, and the flunky is left behind. So you're damn well going to come out of retirement voluntarily and help me before I drag you out!"

The power was coalescing, forming a single solid point a few meters ahead, and that point was expanding and beginning to take shape. "Elena is not the guardian. Nor is Stefan." Honoria's voice whispered out, growing in strength with each word.

Bonnie smiled, a self-satisfied expression of accomplishment. "I know." She smirked, "You meant me."

Honoria wasn't amused. Duping spirits took skill, but Bonnie had mastered the art of being na‹ve. "So, what need have you of I?" The spirit's warm motherly voice turned cold, authoritative and haughty. The clothing and face took on a severity that bore witness to the accuracy of her tomb's image.

"I don't know how to deal with this. I don't know where to start, or what to do. I just know I'm going to die." Bonnie sighed, rubbing at the gooseflesh rising on her arms. "I can feel this, and I'm going to die without saving anyone."

"It wants you." Honoria spoke again, her voice distant, bemused. "It is drawn to your power, and to your connection in the binding of Klaus."

Bonnie rolled her eyes, Klaus again. No matter what else could be said about Fell's Church, all troubles boiled down to some relationship with Klaus. "Let me guess, more dysfunctional vampiric family all attracted to the floating sign over my head that says 'I was there when Klaus bit it'."

The spirit was confused, her presence wafting between intense and fading. "No. Not kin, but similar. To stop it, you must first find the rest of yourself."

Bonnie blinked, the cryptic message in Honoria's words having far too many meanings for her comfort. "Lovely." The girl murmured. "I don't suppose you have any other pearls of wisdom to offer? Like maybe how to find it, general weaknesses, perhaps a phone number for Elena. stuff like that."

The fading was more pronounced now, and silence seemed to echo off the walls. "Honoria?" Bonnie called. "I need help, please! I don't really want to die, in fact, I can honestly say I'm morally against it."

"Trust yourself." The spirit whispered.

Bonnie shook her head, frustration rising anew. "Oh I do. I trust I'll make a terrific corpse, have a lovely funeral, and no one will give a damn." Shoulder's slumping, she balled her hands into fists, stuffing them back into her coat pocket.

The spirit was gone, completely. Sighing, Bonnie felt a pain blossom deep in her skull, the onset of a headache born from stress and a lack of sleep. There would be no help from the dead, and the living were traipsing across Europe, too busy to even send a postcard.

She craved Meredith's cool intellect, or Stefan's noble determination. All she had was herself, and right now that didn't seem to be enough. "Okay, okay, enough of that. There lies the path to Prozac."

History dictated that whatever was out there was also bound by the same constraints that had hindered Klaus and Katherine. Moving water for one, and threshold wardings. "But, logic says that history doesn't always repeat."

What she did know was that a busload of kids were in danger, so how could she protect them? Walking in a slow circle, her feet kicking up dust, Bonnie tried to order her thoughts and analyze the situation rationally. "Kids on a bus are either going home, or going on a trip." She murmured, rubbing at her temples. "Fell's Church doesn't have bus service to school, so that leaves a trip."

In her head, things began clicking. "And school's have to register trips, get parental permission, and request a bus!" She chuckled. "I wonder how hard it is to get info out of a school?"

The thought gave her purpose, and sent her from the cemetery and back into town. Fell's Church had one highschool and one elementary school. The town wasn't large enough to require more than that, really. The children in her visions were young, painfully young. The images of their terrified faces were frozen into Bonnie's mind, granting her confidence in her decision to check the elementary school first.

Honoria Elementary had been built over sixty years ago, but the constant modifications and upgrades to the school kept it in prime shape. Expansion and development allowed for enlarged classrooms, a comprehensive track, and wonderful athletic facilities. It was like being in a miniature version of the highschool.

Walking through the main doorways, Bonnie smiled in memory of her days here. The teasing and cruelty of other children at her Irish accent and red hair had faded from the day that Elena declared her a friend. Four years later, the accent had vanished, leaving being the court princess the world knew as Bonnie McCullough.

Her first kiss had been in grade four, from Gregory Addams. 'I wonder what ever happened to him?' Bonnie smiled, softly. The day he had moved from Fell's Church, Bonnie had sobbed convinced her one true love had left her. Life did indeed move on.

The hallways were painted a rather bland yellow-cream, but were decorated vividly by the artwork from the primary division. The stick figures of people, dogs and the blobbish shape of trees and houses were in brilliant colour on manilla artpaper. Her eyes flickered over them all, as she walked in distraction down the halls of the school.

Years before, going to a school office filled her with trepidation. It was a comfort that adulthood shielded her now from that hesitation, granting her confidence with each step. Pushing the door open, Bonnie approached the receptionist desk with a story ready. The picture she presented was attractive, her pale ivory skin glowing incandescently against her rich red hair's background.

'Some things never change', Bonnie thought fondly, as Mrs. Wilson looked up, blinked twice and then smiled in recognition. The woman had been middle-aged when Bonnie had been a child, but now, she was knocking on the doors to retirement. Her formerly brown hair was liberally streaked in gray and lines marked her eyes from the merry crinkling of thousands of smiles.

"Bonnie McCullough! As I live and breathe!" Doris Wilson's smile was genuinely warm. "Look at you! My heavens, you've grown into such a beautiful young woman!"

Bonnie laughed. "Thank you, Mrs. Wilson. I'll tell my parents you approve of the good genes!" Mrs. Wilson, years ago, had soothed a crying redhead from teasing, explaining that her parents gave her red hair because only the best genes went to a child.

That memory had followed Bonnie through each tease or torment she'd ever received. If redheaded children were to have vicious tempers, Bonnie's was controlled by the kindness of people who soothed her as a child.

Mrs. Wilson clearly remembered that conversation, her blue eyes brightening cheerfully. "You do that, dear." She fondly reached over to pat Bonnie's arm. "Now tell this old woman what I can do for you?"

'Perfect!' Bonnie barely kept a grin from splitting her face. "Well, I'm done school for the summer, as you know, and I find I have some time on my hands. I know some school trips will be cropping up in the near future, and I was wondering if I could volunteer to be there, for parents who can't!"

It sounded positively civic minded, and in Fell's Church, a good citizen was privy to volumes of information. "That's so sweet, Bonnie!" Mrs. Wilson took the bait like a good school secretary. "And, I wish I had known this before, Mrs. Graths' grade ones are at the zoo in Donland today!"

Bonnie's heart dropped to her stomach. "Did they go this morning? How fun!" She managed, desperately hoping that it wasn't today, that the kids would be back this morning, and not late this afternoon.

"It's a day trip." Mrs. Wilson continued, blissfully unaware of the shadow passing over Bonnie's face. "Parents will be picking their children up this evening from the school."

"I'm sure the kids are having a terrific time, knowing they're out of school for the whole day." Bonnie smiled, the expression feeling odd on a face that felt frozen. These children would die, today and she felt like she was too late to do a damnable thing about it. Twenty-three tiny lives snuffed by a monster for the sheer pleasure of the kill.

"Of course they will!" Mrs. Wilson fussed about her desk for some paper. "But, now, you just give me your phone number and if another trip comes up, I'll give you a call! There are so many parents who can't take time from work to join the children, nowadays." She clucked her tongue disapprovingly.

Hastily, Bonnie gave out her phone number, hoping her voice didn't stammer too much. Her mind raced, searching for options. Any possibility was worthwhile, but without a car she couldn't get to the zoo and follow the kids.

Where the slaughter would happen was beyond her, she just knew it WOULD happen. Casting Mrs. Wilson a fond farewell, Bonnie practically ran from the school. "My kingdom for a car!" She muttered, rooting through her purse for her apartment keys. "It's almost noon now, let's assume the kids have until they leave the zoo. How can I get there first?"

Her building was across the street, pausing for a passing car, Bonnie looked up and froze. A crowd was gathering about the front of the complex, a crowd complete with two police officers. "Oh, no!" Bonnie whispered. "Please, no."

The light changed, allowing Bonnie to cross the street. There was no rush now, no hurry to see what people were scrambling over one another to gawk at before turning away to throw up. The police officers looked strained, one speaking into a cellphone with clear agitation.

Psychically, she cleared a pathway for herself, mentally nudging people to want to move out of her way. Like the parting of the Red Sea, they moved aside first to reveal a red- splattered pavement, and then the mangled remains lying on the lawn. "Oh, Gods!" Bonnie nearly wept, her stomach clenching. The children were dead, all dead. The evidence of that lay before her.

The little boy was scarcely identifiable as human. His eyes, mercifully, were closed, but blood streaked all over him. His eviscerated corpse had been so shredded, it was like he'd been caught under farm machinery. Only the face remained untouched, his features frozen in agony and terror. Dried tracks of tears marked down the side of his face, and his hands were clenched tightly.

Her breath was coming in short gasps, painful nauseous intakes of air for a body too shocked to know how to process the oxygen. Turning away, she chose to be a coward and ran for the safety of her home, of her apartment. The keys shook in her hands, the tremors of her body sending them clanging against one another. Bracing her body against the door, she scrambled to push it open.

There was no safety; nothing was sacred. If children could be butchered in the broad daylight of morning, and an old woman slaughtered as the sun set, what was to stop this thing from killing all of Fell's Church?

The shot glass had been used only twice. The first time to pour water into a dying flower, and the second to measure out vanilla extract for a large batch of cookies. This time, Bonnie filled with the first alcohol her fumbling hands had found.

Slugging the shot down, the burning whisky set into her stomach with a vengeance. Three shots later, an artificial calm seeped into her limbs. 'There was only one body, there. Maybe the other's survived?' Her optimism knew no bounds.

Sinking slowly into the couch, she stared at the black television set, unwilling to turn it on and have her hopes dashed. "Why here? Why did it bring the body back here?" If it was going to habitually leave it's calling card at the site of it's first kill, Bonnie already wanted to move.

'It wants you.. It's drawn to your power..' Honoria's unearthly voice echoed through Bonnie's head. 'It wants you.'

"It wants me." Bonnie whispered sickly, making the connection. It didn't want her as a victim, exactly. It wanted her to recognize it for a true opponent, and it did so by leaving symbols of its' prowess and power. Symbols built in blood and death.

Hysteria was a good friend, she'd known it before and welcomed its' blanket over her senses now. The shivers turned into shudders, before falling into panicked sobs. Instinctively, her body curled into the fetal position, and she wept her fears, loneliness and helplessness.

It was too much, far too much to face alone. Her own death she could cope with. Acknowledging her own mortality was easy, but to know that so many children had died to leave her a message, as nothing more important than a calling card was a burden Bonnie couldn't begin to handle.

For the first time, since Elena and Meredith had left for Europe, Bonnie truly felt alone. Elena's glory as Fell's Church resident Queen could not scare away these demons. There was no unearthly host to summon that would vanquish it, and no vampiric brothers to take its' focus from her.

She was alone, and death was her only immediate destiny. "My publisher is going to be so pissed." Bonnie thought around a hysterical hiccup. "I'm not done editing chapter five!"


	4. Chapter Three

Part Three

_**...And in the Dark, There is Comfort Still...**_

by Anya (aka Evilgoddss)

Lungs made screaming protest, the very oxygen she gasped seemed to burn deep within. Knees trembled, having exerted all the energy the body contained and were still being asked to exert more. Again and again, feet pounded the ground carrying a body leaning forward to maximize the forward impetus.

Tonight she would die. The knowledge screamed through her soul, an awareness of finality and the fragile mortality of her life. Moving as quickly as she could, Bonnie weaved her way beyond the trees and into the clearing that had been the battlefield to Klaus' end.

The canopy of trees was familiar, painfully familiar. In the deep heart of her nights, the lacy shadows of these forest guardians had imprinted themselves into her brain. Her body, abused and torn had lain beneath them just as a corpse lies beneath the marker in a cemetery. With the shadows heavy in this place, each tree trunk seemed to have a mocking grin, laughing at the futility of her struggle to survive.

'I WILL NOT DIE!' Bonnie swore, her breath coming in deep heaving shudders. 'There has to be a way out!'

She had escaped the predator for the past three days. After the discovery of the slaughtered children and teachers on the school bus, her days and nights had become a pattern. Each night she would dream a new scene of death, and each day, she would arrive to find the horror just after it happened. The only change in the pattern was that the creature was moving to a more nocturnal setting. Usually, the carnage was discovered late afternoon or early evening.

And it always left a present at Bonnie's front door. A gross, icky, nothing she wanted to keep type of present that sent her gagging. If nothing else, dying would effectively end her receipt of such lovely gifts.

Bonnie licked her lips, tasting blood on her tongue. She had bitten hard, to stop herself from screaming at the pain of the first slash the demon made on her. What had possessed her to go to Mrs. Flowers' boarding house, in the first place? It had been foolish, very foolish, especially in light of her precognitive anticipations. The demon had the same freedom that Stefan and Damon enjoyed, sunlight did not stop or hinder it.

From the moment she stepped onto the front steps, the door had swung loosely open from her first knock, and the iron-based smell of blood lashed out to her senses. Nausea over whelmed her, the stink of death and the taste of fear her instincts allowed brought tears to her eyes. Mrs. Flowers was dead, and her death was horrible.

In the last few years, Mrs. Flowers had become more and more erratic in behaviour. Bonnie was no doctor, but the signs of mental instability were clear. It had become a habit for Bonnie to visit the elderly woman on a weekly basis, just to check up on her. Apparently, Bonnie's enemy had not missed those weekly visits.

'I'm sorry.' Bonnie whispered, miles away from the house. Bending slightly to catch her breath, she tried to suppress the tears in her eyes. She'd cut things too fine by arriving at the house before the killer had left. The scratch down her back, weeping blood copiously, bore testimony to it. 'I'm sorry, Mrs. Flowers. I couldn't protect you. I'm so sorry. It's my fault!'

A gravelly chuckle filled the air around her, a deep sound of endless hunger and menace. The sounds of life around her, the birds and crickets all paused, silenced in the presence of a greater hunter. Rabbits took to their warrens, and groundhogs burrowed deeply.

Bonnie choked back a fearful sob, lifting her head slowly. She could feel it now, she could feel its' presence around her. There was a tangible darkness, or an aura of evil that made a physical and psychic stink in the air. Twisting slightly, she jumped.

Swathed heavily in black folds, glowing green eyes filled with an unholy light glared down at her. The face was concealed, but from what little she could see, the skin was charcoal, not black, but charcoal, inhuman in both texture and tone. The only thing it left loosely visible were its' hands, the long claw-tipped instruments it used to kill.

It was like David and Goliath, a distant part of Bonnie's brain identified. At best, she was 5'4" while the demon had, at least, two feet on he. The sheer body mass outweighed her tremendously just by a glance at the bulk contained it the black cloak and clothing. 'And I left my pee-shooter at home.'

Step upon step she took backwards her mind ignoring the sting of her back for the focus of survival. Keeping her eyes fixed on its' covered chest, she watched for any betraying hint of movement. All the books she had ever read had the hero or heroine do that, surely all those writers weren't wrong! To her, the forest of trees not only caged her but offered her escape. If she could hide in them long enough to bore the demon, perhaps she would yet survive the night.

Facing down Klaus had been easier than this. Klaus had wanted to kill her swiftly, just to get to Stefan and Damon. Staring up at him in defiance had been so easy to do. This thing, however, wanted her screams to echo through the trees before allowing her the grace of death. A part of her almost wanted to let it happen, so that inevitably, she would find a final escape in death. Fortunately, her Scottish stubborn streak protested giving-up strongly.

The first pounce was unanticipated. There simply WAS no sign of movement from its' entire body, and then suddenly, it was inches from her, the clawed hand sweeping down. Instinctively, Bonnie threw her body backwards, rolling back and away, but not before receiving a long deep diagonal cut from left shoulder to abdomen.

'Matching set, great!' Bonnie thought irrationally. The roll followed through with her smoothly rising to her feet and running like hell. It hadn't thought her capable, she knew. Previous victims had fallen and wept their pain and fear, they hadn't fought on to survive.

Speeding through the clearance, she passed the tree that defined the border of the open area to the forest, and almost screamed her relief. Freedom was almost hers, and another day of life purchased.

It was eerie, how the sound had a deeper meaning that the feeling. The loud 'thunk' of a heavy object slamming into contact with a soft body was unmistakable for severity. It made a person wince in empathy. Like the sound a spoon made sliding into a bowl of jello, that slick slurping sound marking the spoon's trespass of another object, Bonnie heard it in relation to her body.

Pain caught up with her brain only after Bonnie realized she'd been hit, badly. The weight of the knife lodged into her back slowly took on a cold rigid precedence to her nerve-endings, and then the tormenting pain from assaulted muscles and tissues nearly brought her to her knees. Breathing, already painful, took on new levels of agony. Gasping, she pushed her body forward, stubborn tenacity keeping her on her feet.

Her feet fell with an eradicate rhythm, sometimes a result of stumbling. Weaving carefully through the trees towards the northeast, there was the remote hope she'd find both the cemetery and help. 'Not going to make it.' She couldn't even gasp the words she could only dimly think them. Her body throbbed painfully, and her head spun. 'Lost too much blood, already!' She knew too much about just how serious her wounds were, Mary had been thorough in sharing her medical knowledge. Night after night, her older sister had memorized her required texts with Bonnie's aid, never realizing just how much her baby sister learned in turn.

Still, despite the abuse done to her body, the creature hadn't caught up with her yet. Triumph surged through Bonnie's tired heart. It was so confident in her helplessness, as a result of the knifing, it never thought she'd persevere. 'Screw you, bugger.'

A fallen branch caught her trembling feet, tripping her face first. With a loud "humph" followed by an unwilling scream as the knife slid deeper, Bonnie fell face first into a hollow. The velocity of her body's fall kept her sliding down into the hollow until she fell into an opening of the catacombs for Fell's Church. 'No!' She whispered, the tears burning in her eyes sliding now.

Pushing against the ground, muscles in her arms trembled, and the left shoulder burned, the knife wound weeping more blood again. She was too weak to lift herself up, the fatigue in body needing the momentum of continued motion to stay upright. Defeated, Bonnie slumped forward, cradling her face in the softness of one arm. 'Please, lord and lady, don't let it find me... let me die. Please.' Gasps faded softly, and a warm blackness covered her, granting her a painless escape.

-------------------------------

Of all the God-forsaken places he had to pass through, Fell's Church was the worst on his list. Grumbling incessantly, Damon stalked up the steps to the Boarding House as if he felt all the world's grievances on his shoulders. The best he could hope for was that Stefan wasn't staying here anymore, and he could leave town before Stefan could discover he was here.

One night to get some sleep and food, and a few hours to beat the shit out of the car engine that just HAD to die in this hellish town. For the cost of the damned car, it had no business dying, much less here. "Never buy domestic." He growled, curving around the porch to the front door. "They never..."

Words failed as his vampiric senses kicked in with a vengeance. Blood wept from the very walls, it seemed there was so much of it. Boldly, Damon stepped into the house, wincing at the sheer violence around him. Mrs. Flower's head, torn from her old body, lay in the old wicker rocking chair, her eyes wide and confused. The brightness of her eyes was dimmed with no soul behind it, but shock and disorientation left a permanent mark on her face.

Around the room, pieces of her body littered the furniture and floor, each piece no bigger than Damon's hand. It was sickening, even to him. The aroma of blood was intense, so fresh that the murder had to have occurred in the past half-hour or so. Working his way from front door to back, Damon winced at the wastage. Blood had been liberally sprayed on the walls, indicating that the killing had been for pure pleasure. 'Stefan REALLY can't find me in town. I just know somehow that he'll blame this on me! What a waste!'

Careful not to breathe too deeply, as it made his eyeteeth itch, Damon stepped through the backdoor and into the night air once more. Gulping fresh air, a familiar scent paired with a distinct impression of intense fear appealed to his awareness. He knew that fragrance oh so well, having held the body issuing it in his arms once before. The fear, though, that was not the same.

Before, Bonnie's fear had always been of the moment. Startlement and nervousness more than actual life and death fear. This stench, this feeling was of impending death mixed with a fragrant smell of her blood.

Damon's stomach knotted instantly, a picture of Bonnie has he'd last seen her popping clearly into his mind. Red hair, in a wild mess, streamed down her thin back as she encouraged him with expressive eyes to accept Stefan and Elena's offering. In the moment he had glanced at her, willing her to understand his decision, she had looked like an earth-Goddess, all that red hair and white skin. Even exhausted, power shined about her with all the glory of innocence.

In that moment, God, he had so wanted her. Not like what he had felt for Elena, that overpowering "must have", but a want that set his blood thrumming amongst other instincts. It had scared him, more than anything else they faced had. More than Klaus destroying Stefan, or his own death, he had felt an irrational fear for what she was doing to him.

And yet, that fear had thrilled him beyond measure too. The unknown had always been Damon's greatest weakness. His intelligence demanded that any unknown riddle had to be unraveled, preferably by him. Walking away had been the hardest thing he had done, but it had been the only way he could say thank you to the girl.

She had saved his life, and his brothers. He owed her. Where he had fallen in the fight against Klaus, a mere slip of a mortal had stood and been victorious. Supposedly, 'nothing living' could stand against Klaus and survive, but Bonnie had stood, triumphant and alive. Granted, it had been by invoking the dead of Fell's Church but that was a triviality.

Sighing, Damon launched himself off the porch and ran for the forest. Powers moved as he ran, letting his body smoothly slide from that of a human to a dark brindled wolf. Paws leapt with secure bounds, tearing across the terrain as if it were a Sunday walk.

Bonnie's scent was with him; he followed the markings on an instinctive animalistic level. Each turn or tuck he made guiding him to a stronger source of the scent. Claws dug deeply into the earth as he burst from the cover of trees into the clearing, the human part of his brain recognizing the battlefield instantly.

His dark head shifted side to side, night-vision making each blade of grass as identifiable as if in daylight. Sweeping across the field, Damon marked where the grass had been depressed under the weight of a body. To the side of it, footprints and the weight of a cloak had shifted the direction the grass bent.

The blood marking the ground was fresh, no more than fifteen minutes old and tasted like the wild raspberries of a forest. Deep with a sweet tangy taste, holding more juice and kick than the cultured version. The girl had still been alive when this blood had fallen.

Falling back on instinct, Damon crouched low to the ground his belly practically dragging across the grass while his battle skills helped him plot the events that had recently taken place in this field. Her opponent had lunged, and Bonnie had gracefully swept her body clear and run for the other end of the forest. There were no indications that the hunter ran after her, though. His trail was less 'noisy', indicating he had walked at a controlled pace.

Thoughtfully, Damon turned to study the enemy's former place, the eyes narrowing to slits as he recognized a pattern whereby one depression at the rear was heavier than the other, but the toe of the other had a depth not normal in walking or stature. It was, however, a normal result of a heavy throw.

Head swerving back to Bonnie's former positioning, Damon padded silently through the clearing, along the trail Bonnie had fled. Again, the scent of fresh blood assaulted his senses, wetting his palate. The object thrown had made contact hereabout. The wound was grievous and life threatening based on the amount of blood fallen to the ground. Bonnie could be easily tracked now, dangerously so. The blood was as easy a path to follow as cookie crumbs... it stained the dark earth, but any hunter could follow a path of blood. As weak from blood loss as she likely was, she was a sitting duck. The wolf huffed, disdainfully acknowledging that the Hunter had a head start already.

Growling lowly in his throat as a sign of his displeasure, wolf now became hunter, turning the predator into his prey. Racing through the forest, he nimbly jumped over fallen branches, and slipped between trees as if they were intangible. The brain focused only on Bonnie's scent, filtering all other smells and impressions for later analysis. The girl had managed to keep moving for a goodly distance, but that was to be expected of any child with the mental strength to refuse a vampire's command and stand resolute against an Ancient. Sprinting around a corner, Damon froze completely, stilling his strong and stealthy animal body.

The Hunter was in front of him, with his back turned. Long black robes shrouded the Hunter, and the only thing Damon readily could identify was massive size. Broad shoulders and a humanoid structure left him with the impression of masculinity. Hesitantly, Damon tested the air. By nature wolves were wary beasts with solid instincts. Coupled with Damon's vampiric senses, and human intelligence, it didn't take much to identify a distinctly inhuman smell. It was like no other creature that he had ever encountered or heard of. Ignorance advised caution, something Damon's arrogance and self-confidence rarely exercised.

Bunching up his muscles, Damon lowered his body into a crouch. His tail lashed side to side in the silent air, a signal of anger. Deliberately, he issued a low growl, and felt irrational pleasure as the Hunter turned, glowing green eyes in a shadowed face narrowing at the sight of the giant wolf.

To the hunter, Damon was nothing more than an overgrown dog out of its league. Powers earned through years of feeding on humans and cultivating heightened skills allowed Damon to mask his true nature when taking another animal form. The danger was that he could accidentally be so caught up in the form that his identity as a man would be lost. Keeping beast from man was difficult, but not impossible.

The hunter raised an' arm, preparing to deal with what it perceived as a minor triviality. This suited Damon perfectly, since fighting the creature was the last thing on his mind. One did not battle the unknown, rather one found out all it could, determined it's weaknesses and then went to battle. He'd spent a few years at the Universite in Paris to learn that one. Springing, Damon's four paws made contact with the tree trunk diagonal to him, and he twisted his body to land behind the Hunter. Scrambling quickly, he jumped into the hole Bonnie had fallen into.

The girl was very still, her breathing uneven and heartbeat frightfully weak. The knife was still imbedded in her back and had punctured her lung judging by the rasping gurgle of each breath. Unless he did something fast, she would die. Hell, even if he did something fast, there was still a good chance she would die. Bonnie was working pretty hard it.

The Hunter was clawing at the Earth, trying to widen the hole. Snarling, Damon shifted from beast to man, setting a hand on Bonnie's back to brace her body, and wrenching the knife out with one swift upward movement. In triage, it wasn't the best move, but the creature was certainly determined and Damon needed whatever physical weapon he could lay his hands on. The knife was solid. It had a good weight to it, and it was proven to be sharp.

He was a product of his century. The noblemen of Italy in the late fourteenth century took pride in ensuring their son's had the skills of a warrior. From archery, to swordplay, Damon had learnt every skill required of a noble child. His father had hired only the best tutor for his sons. And, for the vampire, time stood still. Centuries came and went, but time did not diminish some disciplines. Standing directly below the Hunter, Damon smiled upwards with bared canines, and then launched the dagger into the Hunter's face.

He had the distinct pleasure of seeing the blade sink into one eye and hearing the Hunter's unearthly scream, before he turned and scooped up Bonnie's fallen body. She reeked of blood. Blood coated the front of her body and the back, soaking her clothing with her own life fluid. The slashes were deep and long, sufficient enough to lead her to death were there not the trauma of the knife wound.

The catacombs of Fell's Church were a marvelous maze. Katherine and Klaus had mastered them for their assaults on the town, somehow figuring out where one passageway led to in correlation to a starting point. Damon lacked that same skill. He did, however, have a profound sense of direction on a compass-scale. The cemetery lay in a northeastern direction from Mrs. Flower's house, but since this route had no northern path, Damon chose to follow the eastern until he came to a northern passage.

Instincts on the guard, he listened for sounds of the Hunter following, and was grateful that there were none. His feet splashed into the thin layer of water that lined the catacombs, likely fed in by sewer drains and well openings. There was precious little light down here, barely enough for Damon's vampiric eyes to see by, but he managed. Bending to get past an incredibly low area, rational logic kicked in and he stopped. The Hunter was too massive to make such a clearance, for now Bonnie and Damon were safe.

Finding a dry stretch of ground, Damon sat down cradling the redhead in his arms. 'You're not looking good, Red.' He murmured, his finger's parting her torn shirt to eyeball the tear across her body. Whatever that Hunter had for claws, it sure was sharp. The thin wool of her sweater had parted like it had been soft butter, and the ragged tear reached smoothly across her. A good quarter inch wide, it stretched at least twelve inches down but only parted the epidermal layer. It was enough to slow her down, Damon supposed. Probably, however, it had been pure chance that Bonnie managed to escape with just that cut, the first time. Her back was far worse. It was as if an entire clawed hand ripped down her back, shredding her sweater.

Frowning, Damon stared down at Bonnie's pale face, noting the bloodless colour of her lips. She was dying. The trauma and rapid blood loss were killing her, first by sinking her into a coma, and then by suffocation as her lungs drowned in her own blood. At this point, a hospital couldn't help her.

It put him in a mighty awkward situation too. "I don't need this." He grumbled softly to the unconscious girl. "I wasn't even going to stop in town, you know. Just keep on going, right out of all your happy little lives. You'd think one town could stay out of trouble for a couple of years!" Okay, apparently they had stayed out of trouble for three years, but for a vampire with a lifespan easily over four hundred, he was hoping they could have done without him for fifty odd years. At the very least, with St. Stefan around the peace should have held for a decade.

Bonnie gave him no answer. Her heartbeat was sluggish, slowing down gently.

Sighing heavily, Damon lifted his hand to his mouth, slicing deeply with one fang. A narrow cut formed through the vein, and blood flowed. Gently cradling Bonnie as if she were an infant child, he raised his hand to her mouth, stroking the blood onto her lips.

She didn't react.

"Come on, little one." Damon murmured. "Drink Uncle Damon's nice undead blood, and you'll be all better... assuming you don't mind nightmares, psychotic episodes, and mild occurrences of blood lust. They can be kind of fun, actually. If you want to terrify friends and family."

Nothing. The psyche ruling her mind had removed itself deep into the body taking away the reactive impulses that should have started a feeding cycle, Damon realized grimly. Short of breaking her jaw to part her lips, he couldn't get his blood into her. And if she didn't drink voluntarily, and soon, his blood would bring her across, not just heal her.

Some people were just so stubbornly inconsiderate by insisting on dying after other people had fought to save their life, and ruining a perfectly good pair of fine Italian leather shoes in the process. "Bonnie McCullough, if you don't drink this blood, I'll suck you dry!" Damon threatened irrationally. "Elena really won't be happy with you."

The heartbeat stuttered, as the pauses between each beat became interminably longer. With each beat, he expected it to be her last. "Why do I even care?" Damon murmured, running his free hand over her soft hair. "You're less than nothing to me." Except for his debt to her. His brother's life bought by her courage.

The heart stumbled finally stopping, a death rattle echoing in her chest. As her body died, the shields about her mind faltered, leaving her psyche finally vulnerable, and her psychic powers exposed. The churning vortex of energies that destiny had vested into her tiny body screamed to Damon's senses. It awed him.

And, it was the ultimate in last-minute survival backup. Latching onto the fading awareness of her powers, Damon fed some of his own into her, nudging her fleeing soul to take interest in life. Images of safety, sanctuary and protection flowed from Damon to Bonnie. Each vision was carefully selected to offer the maximum comfort, meaning, and he judiciously concealed who her savior was from the blossoming awareness of her mind.

Her lips parted on a sigh, the tongue finally fluttering to lick the blood wet on her mouth. Lifting her up, cradling her wounded back against his chest, Damon pressed his wrist to her mouth and gently nudged her with his mind to drink. Brown eyes flashed open, almost gold from the power of her mind, melding with the vampiric blood sliding down her throat. It was a merging of power too intense for comparison, lighting the very veins beneath her skin.

The heart pulsed once, a violent surge pumping blood throughout the body, and then began to labor once again. Power released itself into the major arteries and veins of Bonnie's body, power that graciously clotted the wounds her blood could not, and offering a different type of strength to her weak body. Damon took all this in, vaguely. The forefront of his mind and attention was still focused on her fight for survival, not the mending of the body. "Come on, little kitty, claw!" He muttered. Her heart-beat wasn't yet ideal, and her breathing still shallow. If she didn't completely turn the corner, there was still a powerful chance she would rise as a vampire.

Her eyes drifted close, and a soft sigh tore from Bonnie's throat. Curiously, Damon parted her torn sweater to study the flesh, pleased to see how healed it already was. A fine lace of skin threaded across the gaping. "Isn't this interesting?" Pushing her upright with infinite care, he examined her back and shoulder. The hole made by the knife was still visible, the blood dried around the edges and the area scabbing over. Around the tender flesh, Damon watched a network of veins pulse, pushing blood to the wound. He could feel power in the wound, like some sort of bandaid that protected fledgling new veins. "Very interesting." He muttered, filing away all this for later consideration.

Now her pulse was stabilizing, and she was breathing on her own, the slow even rise and fall of her chest was natural to a sleeper. Apparently, the patient was going to live, yet again. As what, though, was yet to be determined.

Gently, Damon eased her back, letting her body rest against his. Keeping her down here in the catacombs wasn't ideal. Whether or not she hovered between true vampirism or not, the chill and dampness would damage her still weakened lungs. 'I can't get you into your house.' He thought to the silent girl in his arms. It wasn't odd that he knew where she lived, not precisely, at least. Several times, after Vickie Bennett's death, Damon had used his exile from the defending group to shadow Bonnie. It had been amusing, to keep watch over her as he had. Following her at a safe distance from the school to her home and wherever else she might go. If Klaus had attacked her, he would have intervened.

Meredith was too cautious to be caught unguarded, and Stefan never strayed far from Elena. Only Bonnie had been truly vulnerable, and yet, she should have been the least defenseless. As for Matt? 'I'm not into pretty little boys; he could take care of himself.' Other contemporaries of his time might have felt otherwise, but Damon preferred to guard where he saw the most opportunity for personal gain.

So, now in this time and place, what was he to do with her? Obviously they had to leave the catacombs, but to go where? Her parents were susceptible to his powers, but even they couldn't help but notice the blood soaked clothing on their daughter. Stefan would accuse him of doing it to her, and Elena... seeing Elena would bring the past he stridently tried to forget rushing back. He wasn't sure his wounds had healed enough for that.

That really didn't leave many options. "Alright, Bonnie. What am I going to do with you?" He sighed, wondering absently why he was getting involved. His priorities should have been simple: fix his car, and get the hell out of this hellhole of a town.

He was NOT staying in this town. Absolutely not, no matter what. There was no force, no power, in the universe capable of making him stay. Nothing anyone said would change that.

Never.

Bonnie moaned, her body twisting slightly in his arms. Accommodatingly, he let her roll to her one side, wrapping an arm about her waist to support her. Her breath fluttered against his chest, the warmth of it seeping through his fine white shirt. Dark lashes fluttered, finally parting over brown eyes.

"Good Evening, cara."

Her flinch made his undead heart feel pride. Centuries of developing a despicable reputation had finally paid off. His voice alone could scare people. What more could a self-respecting vampire want? Still, after all his hard work to save her, watching her scramble to rip those scarcely healed wounds open would be wasteful. Firmly, he wrapped his arms around her, holding her tight.

"Damon!" Bonnie's struggles were weak, but at least she made the attempt.

Smiling wickedly, he rubbed his hand sensuously up and down her arm. "Very good, cara. And now, do you know who you are?"

She must have focused, assembling all her strength for one leap. Pulling away successfully, she scrambled to get clear of him, her eyes darting wildly about the catacomb.

Damon's eyes narrowed, lazily, as he studied her features. She was still too pale. Her naturally fair skin had an almost ashen quality to it. Her recovery was far from complete, and if she pushed herself too hard, she would make things far worse. "I'm not going to bite you, Bonnie." He advised calmly.

Bonnie turned her head back to him, brown eyes tired but disconcertingly clear. "I know that." She had an assurance in her voice he had never expected. "We can't stay here." It was an oppressive feeling, a need to keep running. "It's still out there."

Amused, Damon took to his feet, strolling nonchalantly closer to her. A good meter in front of her, he dropped into a crouch with such speed her breath caught. "_It_, as you so delicately put it, is of no moment. You are not worth pursuing to this level."

Her body shuddered. Concerned that her temperature was dropping, a known side affect to mortals who took in too much vampire blood and yet continued to live, Damon shrugged out of his leather jacket, and wrapped it around her shoulders tugging it snug in the front. "Now, if you have any idea where I can take you, before my brother sees the mess you're in..."

Her lip warbled and eyes filled with tears. "Stefan's gone. They left." She whispered brokenly. "No one believed me, they just went."

In another time, and another place, his heart would have gone out to her. In the here and now, it would not. Or so he sternly informed the undead organ that was definitely softening to her doe-like eyes and trembling mouth. A mouth streaked in his blood, which just reminded him of his responsibilities to her should she not survive the next few days. "What do you mean, they left?"

Tears escape her eyes and made woeful trails down her cheeks. "They left. All of them, except me. They didn't want me to go." She was nearly hysterical, an unusual state for her. Excitable, definitely, but hysterical? If Klaus did not throw a soul into hysterics, nothing would.

The hard, unfeeling heart turned to mush. Careful not to scare her, he scooped her up, cradling her like a sick child, mindful of how tender her shoulder still was. Resting his chin in a mass of red hair, he soothed her like his mother had soothed him all those centuries ago.

Hysteria faded into a soft cry, likely outsourced from fatigue, and then into a quiet silence. When her hand reached to wipe her eyes, Damon was certain the storm was past. "Now, explain all this to me." He requested using that autocratic authority expected of his father's son. "Why is it Stefan has left, and how are you involved?"

Bonnie drew in a shuddering breath, her mind finally latching onto sanity and updating her on the fact that she was cradled in a known killer's arms. Still, Damon was a familiar face, whether or not friendly, and seeing him was oddly enough a welcomed relief. "They're in Europe." She murmured softly, into the fragrant leather of Damon's jacket, still wrapped about her. Oddly, she remembered Elena wrapped in another of his jackets. The fall of light on her blond silvery hair in contrast to the light absorbing darkness of the leather that protected her exposed, newly reborn, human flesh. "All of them. Except me. For a vacation."

Damon made a sound, rather like a grunt of acknowledgement and disdain mixed together. "Why not you?"

"Seventh wheel."

He almost smiled-almost. The phrasing was deliciously cryptic, but not as vague as he was capable of. So, Matt had moved past her already. "And a seventh wheel is not welcomed amongst friends?" The sarcasm was not missed.

She shifted, pulling away from him. Dropping to her knees, she carefully pushed herself upright, using her right arm for support rather than the still sore left. Discussing her feelings with Damon, especially the resentment she harbored towards the others, was not what she wanted. "No."

Her abdomen itched, insanely. Reaching across her stomach, she inhaled sharply at the bruised and uneven feel of scarred skin. Whimpering, she ran her hand up along her abdomen and across her breast. It was healed, all healed! Turning sharply, she looked down at an amused Damon, only now noting how easily she was seeing him in the darkness. "What's happened to me?" Even to her ears, her voice was unnaturally shrill.

Damon shook his head. "You died."

Breath died in her throat. Bonnie swallowed hard, suspecting there was far worse to come.

"And I revived you." He continued, watching as her hand raised to her throat and then mouth. "I would strongly recommend against dying again in the near future, unless, of course, you crave a life in eternal darkness."

Her whimper wasn't quite what he expected. It was as if she had already been condemned to vampirism. The pallor of her face seemed to deepen, and her heart-rate increased unevenly. "No. No. No. No." She shook her head, taking awkward steps backwards.

"Bonnie- " Damon began, standing up without any predatory pretense.

The red hair did not frame a Goddess' young face, not now. All that was left in that pale face was a frightened young woman who knew far too much more than she wanted. "He's going to kill me." She answered his unspoken question sadly. "Again, and again. He'll always come after me. He'll always kill me."

"I think once is normally sufficient, Bonnie." Damon advised, referring to her mortality. "It will believe..."

Her scream shocked him, as did her fist's pounding on his chest with a strength he never dared imagine she was capable of. "Don't tell me what to think!" She raged. "You weren't here! No one was here! It wants ME!"

The first thing Damon did was seize her hands, stilling them from pounding at him. The next thing was to spin her around and sink his fangs deep into her throat, drinking on her scarce blood. It was a heady elixer, sweet, intoxicating, wonderful as it flowed from her into him. She didn't make a sound, having had no time to even realize what was happening before he lifted his head and licked his lips.

Images sorted themselves out in his mind, a cascading series of events that were blood-chilling to even he. The nightmares that were actually visions were defined, richly clear images he could identify from her blood alone. And the carnage she had already witnessed, the poor little bird had faced much with Klaus, but this shocked even his jaded mind. "My gods." He murmured black eyes wide.

She turned in his arms, her hands reaching to bury themselves in the soft folds of his shirt. "I just wanted to die." The admission came softly, the sincerity in it staggering to Damon's ears. "I just want it to end. I can't do this alone, I tried, I can't. I just can't."

Where the words came from, and who said them, escaped Damon's notice, but surely he wasn't him. There was no way in his right or wrong mind that he would willingly volunteer to help, there just wasn't. Yet, it sure did sound like his voice saying "You're not alone. I'll stay."


	5. Chapter Five

Part Four

_**...Honour did Walk amongst the Dead...**_

by Anya (aka Evilgoddss)

Bonnie tightened her fingers around the cold porcelain, her body lunging forward as another heave ripped from her belly. Clenching her brown eyes close, she felt sweat drip down her face but ignored it. The nausea hovered in her head, that dizzying swirl of light and sound that was amplified by her stomach. It was like, her head was the drums, but her stomach the amplifier. The resounding effect was the purging of everything she'd eaten in the past twelve hours.

Including a sizable quantity of blood. 'I drank his blood.' The evidence was in the bowl before her, the very bowl she refused to look at again, for fear of another tide of nausea. 'Oh gods, I really drank his blood.' What did that make her? Elena had started changing, subtlety, before she had died and become a full vampire. Her vision had become enhanced, reflexes faster and her physical strength greater.

She'd also become harder, more insensitive than usual and distant. 'I don't want to become someone else!' the center of Bonnie's soul cried out. 'I want to be me!' The fear fed the nausea, and her body heaved again, cold sweat pouring down her back.

Damon had half carried, half dragged her back to her apartment over a half hour ago. Exhaustion, momentarily banished in the catacombs by adrenaline, had quickly reclaimed her abused body. Somehow, and she didn't quite know how or why, she had been able to follow Stefan's darker brother out of those catacombs. Well, follow wasn't the best word. At first, she had trailed behind, but as her steps lagged longer and longer, Damon had caught her hand and dragged her after him.

Feet had stumbled, twisting once or twice, in the cold dank water of those catacombs, and legs had very nearly given out on the emergency access ladder that Damon had found. The vampire had literally grasped the waistband of her jeans and hauled her up to the surface. From there, he had unerringly located her apartment using the brief address and description Bonnie had provided.

She had remained mute the entire way, her mind still boggling. 'He said he would help. I'm not alone. I'm not alone. Oh, gods, please. Don't let me be alone again.' Shock kept her mind busy and her body quiet. Right up until Damon had ground to a dead halt outside of her apartment complex, swearing profusely in Italian.

It was the gory remains of Mrs. Flowers that finally and completely undid Bonnie. The last possible straw of horror that sent her world careening out of control and her stomach convulsing. The first heave had been in a lilac bush, but the second had occurred in her own toilet after Damon had swept her up, commanded her to invite him in and then dropped her on the bathroom floor.

Shaky hands reached for the toilet lever, pulling it down with weak wrists. The whooshing fury of fresh water swirled the tainted contents in the bowl, overwhelming it with a miniature tidal wave and dragging it out of sight. The cool blow of fresh water rushing in to replace the new vacuum of space was a soothing mist on Bonnie's fevered face.

Licking her cracked lips, Bonnie inhaled air that lacked the stench of blood, and opened her eyes. The world still seemed slightly askew, edges still too sharp and colours far to garish in the florescent lighting. Her stomach, however, seemed to be completely empty. Rocking back, off her knees, she slammed her back against the vinyl-papered wall behind her and pulled her knees up to her chest.

The starfish soap dish mounted on the wall seemed almost silver, with the white film of soap coating the transparent plastic. Staring at in fascination, Bonnie steered her mind clear of any thoughts other than the weird patterns surrounding the plastic where thicker residue of soap tapered thin. The little crescent moons and kitten paws she saw in the soapy film were far more interesting than Mrs. Flower's glassy eyed head mounted on the fence post, anyway. All the blood had drained from the woman's dead remains, leaving only a ghastly white waxen blob that used to breathe in air, smile and laugh.

Muscles knotted, her stomach tensing for another dry heaving convulsion. Willfully, Bonnie gritted her teeth, and clenched her fists denying her body the right to be grossed out. For all she knew, she would be drinking blood before too long. Now was not the time to loose control, but to find it. 'Where's Damon?' Rational thought was a bastion for supremacy of mind over body.

Stumbling to her feet, she caught a glimpse of too wide brown eyes in a white face echoed in the mirror. Her red hair seemed gaudy against her skin, the sallow sickly colour of flesh a dead colour compared to the vibrant living richness of her hair. It was like looking at someone else, someone who had already died. 'I died. I really died. Oh gods, I wonder if Elena and I will compare notes, one day?'

Accepting death was one thing. It had been easy to wake up screaming from a nightmare to know that she was going to die soon. At least, easy to accept that death was knocking. In its' permanent form, death was release. It meant an end of some sort, whether that be of a long life or a short one, happiness or pain, it was an end. For Bonnie, it meant the end of the nightmares and the 'surprises' she had routinely found. It was peace.

Damon just had to muck it all up. 'See if I go off and die again!' Bonnie huffed, glaring at her reflection indignantly. Her lower jaw stuck out stubbornly, and her shoulder's straightened beneath the weight of Damon's leather jacket. Of course, the sheer stupidity of the thought brought a blushing colour to her cheeks. 'Dumb, McCullough. Very, very dumb. Of course you won't go off and die again. You didn't mean to this time, not really. It just happened.'

Shrugging out of the jacket, Bonnie turned on the water, letting the hot and cool mix to a happy medium before splashing her face. Tendrils of hair stuck to the side of her damp face, dripping down her face, neck and onto her chest. 'Huh?' Pressing a facecloth to her eyes, she looked down at herself and winced. "Oh dear."

The sweater had been one of her favorites. The rich green of the wool had brought out the richer highlights in her hair and skin, not to mention that the cut emphasized her curves beautifully. The fabric wasn't much use as a rag anymore it was so shredded. The bold cuts left more skin exposed than covered as they swept down across her torso in a vertical diagonal line. "Great. I gave Damon a free show. Wonderful."

Wrenching a towel from the rack, Bonnie wrapped it around her upper body. Pushing the bathroom door open in firm decision, she poked her head out into the hallway and looked around. Still no vampire loomed in sight. 'Run for it!'

Her bedroom, which was one of the two bedrooms in the apartment, was precisely ten steps from the bathroom door, but with modesty in question, Bonnie beat a path to it like it was the track for the Olympic 1000m sprint. The years of training in the McCullough household finally paid off, with a smooth launch, and a torso twist, she not only cleared the room's threshold but also shut the door just as her towel slid to the floor. "Way to go, McCullough!"

"I was rather impressed." Damon agreed casually, standing beside her armoire.

Bonnie yelped, diving for the towel. "What are you doing in here? This is MY room!" She shouted, ignoring the fact her cheeks flamed. A second, inadvertent as it was, free show for Damon – could her life go downhill more?

Damon's lazy smile was worthy of the pages of GQ magazine, it oozed sexuality, self confidence and darkness. 'The bad boy poster child is in my bedroom. If only he were human, it'd be great.' Bonnie hugged the towel, folding her arms across the front. His shirt was ruined, her dried blood staining the white linen as thoroughly as if it had been dye. Still, as messy as it was clothing was, he had the bearing of a Prince. It was aristocratic superiority in every move, ever pose and every expression.

"I was fetching you your robe." Lifting the long white terry-cloth robe up, the dimple at the corner of his mouth flashed teasingly. "I thought you might appreciate something to prolong your modesty."

Bonnie's eyes narrowed. 'The rat. He took a good long look down there, didn't he?' Marching forward with more confidence displayed than felt, she tugged her fuzzy housecoat free, turning swiftly and slipping it on with her back to him. "Thank you." Bonnie muttered ungratefully.

"De nada." Damon's smiled widened at her tone of voice. Smoothly walking around her, he reached for her bedroom door handle. "I took the liberty of cleaning up the… ah, remains." His voice paused, as he searched for the right word before he had plunged on. "Your front yard is acceptable again."

Bonnie froze, her hands poised on her belt sash. "What did you do with… with Mrs. Flowers?" The voice that had sounded so confident before faded to a scarce squeak. Damon might see humans as nothing more than dusty motes in time, but to Bonnie, Mrs. Flowers had been a person and a friend. A loopy friend, but she had been a friend all the same.

Damon's eyes were unaccountably sad, though his expression did not change. "I took her back to her house and collected up as much as I could. She is beneath her rose bushes. Perhaps a marker could be discretely placed, one day?"

Bonnie stared after him once he left the room. Perhaps Damon wasn't as unaffected as what was once thought.

---------------------------------------

Damon tossed the shirt into the garbage can. Saving it was pointless, the stains would not come out no matter what was tried. Centuries of scientific progress still had not found a method to dissolve blood from white fabric. And wearing a pink shirt was not his style.

His trip back to Mrs. Flowers' had yielded two results. First, he had been able to set Mrs. Flowers' earthly remains to rest as what befit such an honorable elderly woman. For all her foibles, the woman had trusted him in her home, and had provided as much information and resources as she could in the past. All the while, she had known what he and his brother were. Of this, Damon was certain.

Burying her underneath the flowers she had so patiently tended was the least he could do. One day, perhaps, the body would be found, but he was willing to bet that while the police would conclude the old woman had been murdered, it would be decades before the remains were located. Perhaps longer, if they didn't dig deep enough.

The other result of his trip back to the old house had been for his bag in the back of his car. If he had to stay in the benighted town, he'd do it with his own clothes and creature comforts handy. Bonnie's apartment had running water, hydro and more to keep him in the relative style he was accustomed to; all he was responsible for was food, clothing and grooming products. Two out of those three he regularly packed. The third, he would find on his own, later.

Stripping down, Damon winced at the bloodstains on his skin, dried through the denim of his designer jeans. Blood in blue denim wasn't nearly as bad as in white cotton, but it was close. Tossing them into the sink, he continued disrobing before stepping into the running shower.

It was true that vampires didn't like running bodies of water. But a shower was a marvelous thing and not a running body of water in a territorial aspect. The feel of hot water pelting down on flesh had such a soothing effect on the body, regardless of the state of being – living or dead. It was, perhaps, indoor plumbing in it's modern incarnation that Damon regarded as the best invention of the past 500 years.

And if he used up all of Bonnie's hot water, he didn't care. 'I must be insane.' Arms braced against one wall, Damon leaned forward, just letting the water pour onto his back. 'I offered to help. What was I thinking? I don't offer to help. I kill. I destroy. I take what I want. That is who I am and what I do.'

But, Bonnie had saved him and his brother before. Did that not create a debt?

'Repaid when I brought her back from death.'

And the sweet lost look in her face, the resignation to a painful end. The abandonment of his brother, something Damon knew well about. 'I'm getting soft.' Sighing, Damon tossed his head back, a lock of hair pushing first up and then back down squarely into his eyes. 'I should tell her I've changed my mind and get the hell out of here.'

Except, he wouldn't. He knew it, Bonnie knew it, hell, the thing stalking her knew it. It was like someone had stamped in red ink and block letters "Sucker" on his forehead. The noble streak Stefan thought Damon lacked was surfacing and kicking his common sense down with a vengeance, despite his best attempts to deny it.

'Ahh, little brother. See what you've driven me to do?' Maybe, just maybe if he was lucky, Stefan would crawl back into town to hear Bonnie singing Damon's praises. Perhaps, even, Stefan would return before this whole mess was ended.

And perhaps Bonnie was an Irish Goddess reincarnated and he was the Emperor of Rome in a past life.

'No good will come of this.' Damon growled, shaking his head. "Damn." His will was hostage to the town's troubles, he realized. Galvanized back to action, he savagely washed his body, scouring at flesh as if it could cleanse away this desire to help. 'I could still just leave.' He reminded himself, again. 'So what if Bonnie dies. What do I care?'

She would rise again, though. His act in those catacombs had ensured that. In a few weeks, the blood would peter out of her system, but for now, she was a prime candidate for vampirism. A normal recipient of a mild amount of blood had heightened sensitivities, an inclination to nightmares or dreams, and a weakness to the same icons that vampires could not tolerate.

Bonnie had received far more than a mild amount of his blood. Whether or not she threw up some of it, a substantial quantity had entered her bloodstream, and it would stay there for at least a week, if not more. Given her natural abilities, how his blood and its' power would affect her was not clear, but as a potential sire, it was his responsibility to see her past any transition.

What had he been thinking to open his veins to her like that? 'Debts be damned!'

The water around him chilled, slightly, responding to the diminished supply in the water heater. Opening his eyes to the steamed shower stall, Damon chuckled ruefully. How long had he stood here debating with himself on something that held no option for debate?

There was no way around it. Something about the situation in Fell's Church bothered him. Firstly, in Bonnie's involvement. His debt to her had been repaid, but had also been deepened by an obligation. Secondly, by the murder of Mrs. Flowers. The sheer violence in the house had been unwarranted. The old woman had been a few bricks short a load, but Damon couldn't believe she had any enemies. And thirdly, the feel he had received from the creatures. This was something that could rip his baby brother to shreds. Did he really want to walk away from this situation knowing that Stefan did not stand a chance against such a creature.

The water slammed off, a vicious shove and clunk as the valves responded to the change in the taps. Roughly toweling himself, Damon stepped clear of the shower and began to rummage through his bags.

The mirror was fogged up, not that it mattered. He had gone long enough without a mirror to need one now. Combing through his hair with careful meticulousness, he abstained from further thoughts about why he was helping, and steered to what he needed to do. The first thing was obvious: Find a blood supply. He was good for now, but tomorrow he would need to feed. 'Bonnie's sister is a nurse.' He recalled from Bonnie's memories in her blood. 'Perhaps a visit to the hospital is in order?'

The next thing was a place to sleep. Bonnie's apartment was nice, but there was only one bed: her bed. The couch was too short, the floor too hard, and his patience too limited. Wrapping the towel about his waist, toga style, Damon scooped the bag up with one hand and marched boldly out into the hallway.

The light was on in Bonnie's room, but no where else in the apartment. The night was well progressed, by now, and Damon was surprised to realize that despite the fact he was a creature of the night he was ready to crawl into a bed and die quietly for at least twelve hours. It was testimony to how much blood he had fed Bonnie.

The girl had changed from her torn and stained clothing into a conservative nightshirt, long-sleeved, satiny and much too warm for the time of year. Curled into the center of her bed with a notebook and pen, that Damon identified as her diary, she seemed miles away not even aware that there was a vampire in her bedroom.

He dropped his bag with a loud bang, causing Bonnie to jump a good way and cry out in fear. The yelp just brought a malicious smile to Damon's face. "I'm sorry, cara." He grinned shamelessly. "Did I startle you? My apologies."

Bonnie's brown eyes were huge, the mouth posed in a small 'o' of surprise only emphasized the size of her eyes. "What are you doing?" She asked with suspicion, eyeing his nearly naked body with dread.

Damon shrugged, padding barefoot to the bed. "I'm going to bed." He announced blandly, as if this was an obvious fact. "And since I have to stay here…" His voice trailed off as he came to stand beside the bed. Bonnie squirmed her way to the other side of the mattress, as far from him as she could go.

"And what?" She squeaked, already convinced she knew the answer.

He tugged the duvet up with a smooth motion, throwing his body between the sheets, and laying back. The towel fell to the floor unneeded. "And I won't be sleeping on the floor." He finished. Reaching over, he flicked the bed-side lamp off, plunging the room into darkness. "Goodnight Bonnie. Pleasant dreams."


	6. Chapter Four

Part Five

_**...The Secret Kept but Not Kept...**_

by Anya (aka Evilgoddss)

It was a natural phenomenon or rather, supernatural phenomenon: Vampires and other creatures of the night had always flocked to the sites of war, slaughter and destruction. The system worked in everyone's favor. Walking amongst the soldiers, and crouching low beside the critically wounded, it had been a picnic for the flesh-eaters, and a buffet for the blood-drinkers, and for the humans: a cheap and simple disposal system. No one bothered to wonder why a man with an arrow in his shoulder should suddenly die, or loose a hand. It was the outcome of war: Men were hurt, they died, and then a bonfire was lit to dispose of the remains.

Since he had first woken to this new life, Damon had been a willing participant of this ritual. Some instinct deep within him always and unfailingly drew him to sites of carnage. Even if he were a continent away, should the instinct say there was good eats, he would go to them.

Why else, he mused darkly, were there so many Americans missing after their little spat with Korea? All those dark nights, looming trees, and mass confusion had been perfect cover for the all-you-can-eat binge that many vampires, other than Damon, had enjoyed.

They had been the Korean devils in the night stealing away American soldiers to a God-knew what fate. The one consistency of any vampires hunt, however, was that the body was never found. The gory remains, the blood, the horror etched eternally in the dim glass of the eyes was removed from bearing witness to the supernatural. This was how it should -- and needed - things to be.

Stepping quickly into shadows, Damon's eyes slid to narrow slivers, as he watched the howling red firetruck speed through the streets to the burning house up the way. The occupants of the house were dead, very brutally dead. Their bodies disposed in little pieces throughout the building, and blood washed the walls from basement to attic. Lighting the fire had been Damon's only way to cover up the murder.

The Hunter, whatever he might have been, was out of control. This was the first time, in all of Damon's long history that he'd ever encountered or heard of such a creature. Even Klaus had been tempered by certain restraints. It was one thing to pursue a killing spree and mask it as a human murder, but another to viciously slaughter an entire town with no attempt to conceal the supernatural forces behind the deaths.

No matter how Damon argued the point, the simple truth was that he could no sooner walk away from this situation than he could part with his ring and walk in sunlight. The pledge he had given Bonnie would stand, but not just to repay her for his brother's life, but to protect his own interests. If the mortal world discovered the supernatural world, he and all of his kind would become actively hunted once again.

Pursing his lips into a dark frown, Damon skulked through the backstreets of Fells Church, returning to the scene of the fire, and the victims therein. Within the safe shroud of the morning's shadows, Damon studied the gathering crowds. The officials of Fells Church gathered tightly, near the trucks, and based on the circle about one individual, a plan was being devised to battle the blaze. This was all well and fine, Damon mused, but the fire needed at least another fifteen minutes to dispose of the truly damning evidence.

They could find scattered bones and remnants of clothing, finding such as that brooked no argument from Damon. It was, theoretically, feasible that a killer entered the house, hacked the people to bits, and then set the building ablaze. What was not feasible was the visible tearing of people into pieces, or the claw marks in the flesh made by a creature with four fingers and one opposable digit. There were no weapons, no tissue samples, no blood other than that of the victim, nothing to discern a mortal kill. Only the evidence that the murder weapon was a bipedal monster. Even in Fells Church, with the population's distinct blind spot towards the occult, it was a small leap to finding the truth.

Ironically, the kill was fresh. Damon had been skulking about in the early morning, having left Bonnie asleep in the horridly uncomfortable love seat in her living room. The blood was nothing to the sudden death shriek his heightened senses had heard. Shifting easily into animal form, he'd reached the small house too late to discover or follow the Hunter, much less stop him. All that was left behind stating the Hunter had been there was raw carnage.

Organs lay upon the floor haphazardly, large, small, intact or in chunks. The intestines spilling out like obscene jump ropes from the savaged trunks of human remains deposited on the stairwells. The worst thing, as far as Damon was concerned, was what the evidence was telling him. The Hunter was not feeding off his victims, at least, not physically feeding off his victims. The slaughter and obscenity at the murder scenes were either for a psychic death feeding or for gratuitous pleasure in creating violence, or far worse: due to extreme insanity.

'Please, let it be gratuitous pleasure.' Damon sighed silently. Those were creatures he could understand. After all, he himself took pleasure in the hunt and kill, and could at least begin to understand and target the best approach to deal with another hunter/killer.

If the Hunter were insane, or a soul-feeder, well then - "Not good." Damon suddenly muttered aloud, both in reference to the thought and the sudden dispatching of the human mortals towards the burning house. There hadn't been enough time yet, by Damon's reasoning. Leaning forward for a better view, he watched a phalanx of firefighters form up to approach the house, their positioning along the front of the house armed with the equipment of their trade reminiscent of medieval knights preparing to lay siege.

Damon shook his head ruefully once again vividly aware of the cost this entire situation would have upon him. He dropped his head, chin resting on his collarbone, and let his eyes close in concentration. With the sun rising in the morning, power moved sluggishly in him. This was the dormant time of day for he and his kind. To move about with the charm of the lapis lazuli was one thing, but to effect workings…. Damon gritted his teeth, harnessing what age and experience had taught him, and gathered up his centuries of power. Loosely, he built it inside the house, letting power fuel the fires hotter and hotter. It was a dangerous game for a vampire. Feeding power to a fire left the vampire open to the spark of the blaze. The sun was not the only light and heat source that could kill, after all. A pyre would do remarkably as well.

Again, his age and power aided him in the wisdom to control the connection between himself and the blaze. 'Firebug' he self-identified in himself, eliciting a slanting self-amused smile.

The firefighters approached the blaze cautiously, but breaking into the shell of the house met with the greatest danger such professionals could encounter - a backlash. Damon now relaxed his control, pleased with his workings, and acknowledging that no matter what else came of the blaze, the evidence was thoroughly destroyed.

A pity really, there was so much he and Bonnie might have learned by studying the remains -- the killer's weight, style and origins, as well as Bonnie's strength of stomach. Although, Damon sighed silently, the likelihood of learning anything useful about this predator from this scene was remote. All he had were more questions about what the creature was killing for. It made no sense.

It hunted Bonnie, in repeated targeted attacks, but it killed viciously around her. There was no connection, to the best of Damon's knowledge, between the victims and Bonnie, other than that they all lived in the same town.

It did not make sense. "Surprise, surprise." Damon muttered, stepping back further into the shadows. Fells Church lacked an abundance of back alleys or streets that were darkened with shadows, but there were the fire escape routes, backyards, and delivery paths for the commercial aspect of town that allowed for the creatures that went bump in the night. The open streets of daylight were for the living, at least symbolically. In truth, Damon simply wished to avoid being recognized.

So, he skulked in the dark, making his way in the sub-routes of society that seemed to scream out for he and his kind. The symbolism of the entire "their road, his road" was not lost on Damon, he just simply didn't worry at it as Stefan would. That he was a creature of the night was fine by him. His need to feed from blood held no moral dilemma for him, it was simply a fact of life. And it was a fact of his life he liked, for that it meant an eternal existence.

Chuckling softly, Damon slid his dark sunglasses back onto his face, even though the sun did not crest over the buildings he moved between. All paths, in Fells Church led to one of two places: the library or the cemetery. Bonnie, he knew from her blood, had once already tried the cemetery and that path bore no fruit. So now when all else failed, it was time to do research. And where else to accomplish such study but at Fells Church small civic library.

Small in size, Damon acknowledged silently, but not in lore. The books in that building contained more knowledge of the occult than he rather suspected the entire town, save perhaps the librarian, realized. And chief amongst such resources was Honoria Fells' journal.

If the Hunter could hunt and prey in this day and age, with such power and skill, surely one had visited this town in the distant past. And if there was to be a way to destroy this damned creature, it was written in that journal. 'Know your enemy', that was the credo all young students of the Renaissance learned in terms of warfare.

It was well past time Damon learned of his new enemy, before this threat launched humankind into a witch-hunt unlike any before.

------------------------------------------

The librarian was no challenge, at least, to Damon. A simple smile and a few soft words and the middle-aged woman was putty in his hands. So effortless was his conquest of her, that she easily ignored the standing mandate of keeping Honoria's diary secured and untouched, opening the glass case and lifting it out without a second thought.

Of course, Damon had graciously guaranteed that his usage of such an exemplary primary source would be purely for the academic need of a thesis paper. In some ways, he mused, it was true. This was, however, a living thesis. The theories he might resolve in study of the diary would only be backed as solid fact by further pages in the same book.

The diary was something he and Stefan had once discussed in passing, a conversation that took historical note. It was a time of peace, between them. In the moment after Elena's death and Klaus' murder of Vicki Bennett, there had been long periods of peace. Oh, the antagonism and contempt had been thick, even then, but neither raised a hand against the other.

It had been the most boring year of his entire existence.

However, despite that irrelevant line of thought, Damon now recalled Stefan's observations about the diary. It was written in an almost elusive code, truths buried amongst simple folk observances. The simple description of a winter storm took on new meaning when the words between the lines were read. The origins of Fells Church's werewolves, and of the Abati that had preyed on townsfolk, and, also of a dark sorcerer who had worked bloodmagic on the land, and more contained in the book. It was all there.

And, miracle of miracles, so was the Hunter.

_'Sarah Rafferty had herself a bad night, last evening past. Thomas went out to the farm, first thing this morn, to check up on the poor lass, and found the barn in shambles. _

_Sarah, herself, was all right. But the lifestock was ruined. Thomas returned pale and shaken, but resolved himself into herding the townsmen together to dispose of the remains. He forbid all womenfolk to be there, saying that the mess was too ghastly for our constitutions. Myself, though, he did make allowance, citing that it was to comfort Sarah that I went. _

_The brutality was dreadful. I fair near fainted to see such horror. Yet, we must praise God that this nightmare came not to touch our Sarah. What, with Liam's recent death, and in such horrible circumstance, the lass can bare little more. _

_Such a battle was fought at that farm, of that Sarah and I are certain. She and her wee children would not live now, if not but for the grace of our Lord's hunters. For surely they caught such evil darkness at work and put an end to it, as they are wont. _

_The dead herds bled out not; the men crossed themselves many a time in seeing that. I can only pray that this town, built on such strange ground, does not draw more of these old nightmares. This plague, I suspect, is the cause of Liam's death, and it is my hope that the Hunter has put an end to him. I must believe so, as Sarah lives. _

_The child, wee Jonothan, felt nothing, but slept through the night with the peace of the Lord in his grasp. A shiny child, he is Liam's only son. He will do his mother proud, I feel certain, what with...' _

Damon broke off, frowning down at the pages again. The intermediate rambling about the town folk, after burying truths in innocent Christian phrases were tiresome, but necessary given the period of time Honoria had lived in. Amazing, in a town so small that her psychic abilities had escaped unnoticed.

So, either this current hunter or another had been here before. And, in reading from the lines, it's rightful prey was Old Ones like Klaus. Damon frowned down, staring darkly at the handwritten lines of text. There were too many questions, far too many questions for his liking. Most of them, once addressed, only evoked further questions and precious few answers.

Too damn few answers, in all truth, were being found. 'Why is it killing people then? Is it confusing mortals with ancients?' Damon looked up, to the stain-glass window arching gracefully over the foyer entrance. The stained light, shining down onto the rich wood flooring was as red as the spilt blood this morning, it held the same fragility of mortality, the fallen rays. Only the source of that light was unchanging -- eternal.

Was that the clue? Eternal, the Hunter was given the sole task of destroying the old ones, the First of the vampires. Klaus had been destroyed by themselves, and in being denied it's true enemy, the Hunter went insane? Maybe that was the reason it seemed so fascinated with Bonnie, as she was one of the key reasons Klaus had been overcome.

'And maybe fishes walk on land.' Damon growled, sourly. How could a creature made by a higher good power corrupt so completely? No, the theorism wasn't enough. Flipping through the journal some more, he finally reached the last page, and even there Honoria had covered the inside and outside flap of the book with text. Absently, Damon's fingers ran down the soft paper that lined the inside of the cover, his finger tips softly touching the thick edges. One pass made, and he froze, sweeping his fingers up again in another confirming pass before digging short fingernails into the glue that held the page down to the books frame.

Slowly, cautiously, he peeled back the paper revealing a hidden square of fragile print. Covertly, Damon looked around and saw no one bearing witness. Shutting the journal, after folding the peeled back page in place, he set the diary aside, and fixed all his attention on the scrap of paper.

It seemed that Honoria was not as loath in sharing her secrets as it first seemed. It was just a matter of WHO she wished to share them with.


	7. Chapter Six

Part Six

_**...The Hunter and The Wolf...**_

by Anya (aka Evilgoddss)

"So, he's a good guy?" Bonnie tried, very, very hard, to even begin to understand what Damon was saying. The problem was, in HER world the good guys didn't go around slaughtering families.

"No." Damon corrected, neatly unfolding the yellowed piece of parchment onto Bonnie's kitchen table. "It was a creation of good, of the Gods to preserve humanity, but it's either been corrupted or gone mad."

Bonnie toyed with a lock of red hair, her index finger spinning the brilliant tress around and around as she mulled through that argument. "Possession?" She hazarded, her chin shifting as her lower teeth nibbled on her upper lip. "There's been a great deal of debate that a possession will leave the possessed in a broken mental state."

Damon looked up from his page, the fathomless black eyes unblinking. It was amazing how light would strike those eyes and be absorbed, rather than reflecting. "I don't know." He argued. "The killings began four weeks ago, the first murder at your building, on your car, while you were moving in."

Wordlessly, Bonnie nodded confirmation to his statement. The image of poor vacant eyes and slaughtered body on the hood of her car permanently etched into her mind. Even now, weeks after the slaying, the scent of blood seemed to rise up around her and the chill of the night seeped into her bones. "It wants me." She remembered, not as if she could ever forget it, but that it needed said now. "Why me?"

Damon shrugged. "Klaus?" He hazarded the guess.

Arms folding in front of her, Bonnie suddenly propped her face into the safe little burrow there. Always and forever, Klaus would return to haunt her life, wouldn't he? She hadn't been the one to literally destroy him… or imprison him, if she was going to be honest here; she'd simple channeled the energy needed to give form to the powers that did the dastardly deed. If it were insane for being denied its prey, wouldn't it have targeted Elena?

"Elena had no scent to target, at the killsite." Damon argued, although Bonnie hadn't said a word. "The only power there that was marked, or traceable, was yours."

Tilting her head, brown eyes met black. "Great. So it's brassed off at me, and killing all of Fell's Church in a massive temper tantrum. Marvelous. If the Gods created it as an act of benevolence, why aren't they doing anything about it? Why aren't they protecting the innocent?"

Pure aristocracy shone from Damon's careless shrug, the elegant rise and fall of the shoulder's that allowed his concern for the masses to slide completely away from his mind and body. "How should I know, cara? I was raised Roman Catholic. There is only one God in my father's faith, and no such demon's or creations walk His world."

Bonnie just glared her expression hard and fast. "I never said it was my faith." Damon amended affected by her baleful gaze. "It is the only one I know of."

"Wonderful." Bonnie groaned, pushing herself away from the table and to the fridge. Reefing the door open, she scanned the contents quickly, not really wanting a glass of milk, but it seemed it was her own option. 'I really need to go shopping.' She mumbled to herself.

Damon either ignored her, or didn't hear her, Bonnie decided, as silence created her mumbling and the slam of the fridge door. Turning about, milk carton in hand, she leaned back against the appliance and stared at the neighborhood big bad vampire. As unlike Stefan as he was Damon definitely had moments where the kinship ties between Salvatores appeared. The line of his jaw and squint in his eyes as he tried to decipher a badly aged slip of paper. His dark hair fell forward in response to the tilt of his head, and occasionally his hand wound flatten and then flex in agitation.

Yup, there was no mistaking the Salvatore do-gooder pose in action.

Smiling, almost amused in spite of the world out to get her, Bonnie opened the carton and sipped directly from the container. The milk was tasteless, but cold and wet. Willfully ignoring the sheer blah flavour that had about as much stimulation as saw-dust, she swallowed several mouthfuls and lowered the container and her chin just in time to see Damon was staring at her. "What?"

"How did the -" He twisted his head to read the container. "-milk taste?" There was no rancor, or cruelty in the question, but if Bonnie had to assign an emotion or state of being to his tone, it was concern.

"Yuck." She answered, shoving the container back into the fridge and pulling out a bright red apple. "I've never really liked milk, though." Wandering back to the table, she slumped back down on her chair.

"So, it was the same flavour as before, then?" He persisted, those dark eyes unusually intense.

Bonnie tilted her head side to side, mulling over the answer to that question. "No. I guess not. It had no taste, kind of like lukewarm water. Just blah." She absently lifted the apple to her mouth, parting her lips for a big bite.

_Whap _

Bonnie blinked, a squawk of protest instinctively rising from her throat. "What did you do that for?" She demanded angrily, as Damon set the apple down on the table.

"It would make you sick." He answered dryly. "And I don't have time to both coddle a sick woman and try to find this thing."

"Make. Me. Sick." Bonnie repeated the words with a mild degree of fatalism. "Because of the blood. Your blood." She finished flatly.

Damon looked back at his holy grail of mystery, his finger resting midpage. "Yes." Bonnie's reaction to his blood had been stronger than what he originally had anticipated. Of course, some of that had to do with sheer quantity, and how much of the vampiric blood her body had used directly to repair wounds.

He also couldn't forget her immediate and unconscious reaction as he had fed her. Oh no, the sudden flash of golden fire all through those brown irises… that had not been normal nor anticipated, but it had been a very vampiric response. Gradually, food could be reintroduced to her body, but for the immediate present, it wasn't in her best interest.

"I see." Bonnie murmured, pushing away from the table and disappearing down the hallway.

Damon only gave her leaving the faintest of attention, even when she grabbed her purse and keys as she bolted out the door. Whether the creature found her or not was not worth considering. After all, neither daylight or the sanctity of the hearth and home were sure against this creature. Bonnie was in as much danger in her own apartment as she was in the middle of town.

The paper, however, was proving fascinating. The details Honoria had left out of the diary were all fleshed out here, on the Smallwood family curse, the attraction Fells Church held for the supernatural, and most importantly, the story of two Ancients who had come to Fell's Church over a hundred years ago.

Gul had been, in all likelihood, very like Klaus. Vicious, insane and cruel in both mannerisms and his actions to the people of the town. Slaughtering livestock, and killing rampantly, it had been his obvious goal to make the entire town HIS domain. Like the days of their glory over a thousand years ago.

The ancient had spent months setting things up from the shadows of the forest, leaving his crimes as a statement, but making his face remain unseen. It was the prescience of Honoria Fell that gave the nameless predator both a face, identity and name. He was an Ancient, a First One, a vampire unlike others in that he could not be slain by a stake and sunlight did not harm him.

All of Honoria's spell castings and her charms had proved useless against Gul. In despair, she had done a blind summoning for help, for aid of some sort. But, how God had answered her shook both her faith and composure.

Within two days after the summoning, Shiri had arrived, openly. Gul's former mate, an ancient of equal power and passion measured in compassion. She hid her true nature from the townsfolk, but openly targeted Gul, hunting him down as if he was nothing more than a beast. To Honoria, that was precisely what he was, a cruel rabid animal.

To Damon, as he slowly transliterated the old fragile page Honoria had hidden in her diary, Gul was but an incarnation of Klaus.

Shiri had worked long and hard, finally trapping her brother-in-spirit for a final battle. But, no sooner had that battle been joined when a Hunter arrived. It was the final atrocity reached that had disturbed Honoria's faith in the power of good to triumph over evil, Damon supposed, reading between the lines on the paper.

Shiri had just staked Gul, a means to subdue him but not destroy him when the Hunter intervened, taking Gul's head - and then as the corpse slowly shifted and fell apart in the finest fragments of ash, Gul turned raising his sword at Shiri. Viciously, it had attacked the tired Old One, ignoring both the good the female had done and the lengths she had gone to just to protect the town.

It did not weigh the goodness of her soul against the blackness of her being, it just found her guilty of being an Ancient. Knowing it was a lost battle to fight, Shiri made a sacrifice that had driven Honoria to write this page. In the instant before the Hunter leveled it's axe, Shiri summoned lightening to destroy her body and cast her spirit free.

Free to be reborn as a mortal, Honoria had theorized. Free to rest eternally in the land of the dead, or to transcend mortality as an angel. Whatever became of Shiri's soul, the one thing that Honoria made very clear was that the Ancient was truly free.

The Hunter's axe swept through empty air, his kill vanished and denied forever. It seemed, for a few moments, that the creature had gone insane, swinging out wildly at trees, animals and rocks as if unable to cope with this loss. Yet, just as suddenly as it had lost it's mind and prey, it calmed and disappeared from Fell's Church.

Honoria had never heard or seen any Old Ones, or Hunters, again for the rest of her long life.

'Would it that it had continued as such.' Damon thought ruefully, always amazed at the amount of supernatural activity occurring in the one God-forsaken small town. Shaking his head in bemusement, for his role in some of that activity, and the drama now playing here, he refolded the yellow parchment with all the respect it deserved. Pulling the meaning from it had taken a great deal of time, despite his own familiarity with archaic English. The thee's, thou's and other simple words of a farming community couched in appropriate awareness of 'good language and proper thought' hid a lot of simple fact just to try and keep things clean.

Setting the page in the middle of the table, Damon twisted to look around the room, noting, for the first time, the sparse decoration and furniture of the kitchen. True, Bonnie had only recently moved into the unit, but it still surprised him that her home lacked any stamp or sign that marked it as HER home. It was as vague and transitory as any place, short of the Villa in Italy, that he had ever owned or stayed in for any period of time.

Straying beyond the boundaries of the kitchen, and back to the bedroom he'd usurped last night, he looked about the apartment with renewed curiosity. A few odd photos, and a couple of unique ornaments, but nothing that was so permanent it couldn't be quickly packed and removed if she needed to run. 'Interesting.' Damon mused, idly picking up Bonnie's journal off the edge of her end-table without a thought to the trespass.

The small brown leather book had no lock. It was the worn edges and the creased spine that told the story of much faithful usage, and the consistent blue ink that ran through the pages that detailed a story of a very lonely life. The past year, since Klaus, had not been overly kind to Bonnie McCullough. The gradual drifting from close friends and increase in her own powers all were cause to a painful self-isolation.

Reaching the last few weeks worth of pages, Damon frowned at her encounters with the Hunter. The creature's obsession with Bonnie disturbed him far more than he was willing to admit. While it did, on some level, make sense that it was reacting to her 'scent' at the killsite for Klaus, it did nothing to explain the depth of obsession and perversion in the creatures normal habits.

The Hunters did not kill humans, and none of the victims had been anything less than painfully human and terribly mortal. The vicious delight in the slayings, the artistic extremities were far more akin to Klaus' style, meaning an "Old One's" approach to the kill than to a Hunter gone insane. Logically, if the Hunter had snapped, the killings should have remained isolated to the things connected to the denied target. Bonnie, himself - vandalism of the graveyard, the butchery of the remaining Bennett family - attacks with a structure or logic to them. The rampant and random killings were much to much akin to Klaus' approach.

'Perhaps that is it.' Damon mused, his fingers setting the soft diary pages fluttering in a fan-like action. Stroking up the soft edges, lifting them, and letting them flutter downwards before stroking upwards once more. 'A possession, just as Bonnie said.' Licking at the corner of his mouth, he suddenly recalled how long it had been since his last feeding. He had meant to visit the hospital and beguile some supplies, or make a mercy killing or two, but the old document had caught far more of his attention.

Dropping the book carelessly, Damon strode from the room, every stride full of purpose and determination. Grabbing his sunglasses off of a small ledge against the entrance-way wall, he reefed the door open and walked right into the Hunter itself. 'Oh, bloody crap.' Damon barely managed to drop to the ground before the creature swiped at him.

The thing hovered before Bonnie's threshold, seeming to test the air with the way it's head leaned forward and bobbed slightly. 'Bonnie's scent?' Damon wondered absently. The girl had a marvelous scent to her, a mixture of both her shampoo and her power. It called to creatures of power, but spoke of equivalency. It wasn't something that could get Bonnie killed, necessarily, but rather a scent and impression that should have kept things from attacking her.

The pause was all the opportunity Damon needed. Chuckling egotistically at his superiority, Damon pulled his strong limbs into a tight crouch, tensing muscles and forming the shape needed for his escape. Length of limb and muscle all uncoiled in a powerful burst as Damon leapt through the creature's spread legs. Lunging, he smoothly tumbled feet over his head, his shoulder's striking the hard landing with satisfaction and his feet arching towards a graceful rise. This was the expected outcome, Damon truly hadn't anticipated smashing his body rolling down the first step and from there, falling down the rest of the way.

It was against his ego to yelp at the insistent pain that wracked his hungry body with each thud, thump and smash from the sixteen concrete steps down to the landing. "In the immortal words of mortals everywhere: Ouch." He muttered, pulling the bruised and abused body up to his feet by sheer willpower and a centuries old survival instinct. With one hand bracing a neck he'd narrowly avoided breaking, Damon looked back up the stairs for the Hunter. Either he fell faster than that thing walked, or it was in the apartment.

'Two options... stay here and fight the Thing, or find Bonnie and get the hell to high ground.' Damon mulled his options for all of a single second, before a flash of motion made up his mind for him. With a terrific jump, he bounced out of the Hunter's range, not missing the very feline movements in the Hunter's leap. Setting a pace that would have been impossible for a human, but easier to sustain if he had power enough to shift form, Damon ran from the building and towards a nearby community park.

Predictably, the gruesome representative for insanity followed suit. 'Honoria, you could have included a chapter on 'how to destroy Hunters.'' He grumbled silently, bones and muscles aching their complaint at this abuse. The fact he hadn't fed crippled him more than he wanted to admit.

Virginians prided themselves on their forests, the thick trees and lush land were as much part of the natural environment as they were of a society's heritage. Tall, dark and graceful, the trees reached high to the sky and spanned broadly with their great age. Not only did they provide shelter for the local fauna, but they made for a wonderful maze to weave through. Darting from tree to tree, Damon increased the distance and distraction of the Hunter as much as possible.

The senses it used to stalk Old Ones apparently also applied to vampires, though, for as much as Damon was able to increase the space between himself and the Hunter, the Hunter never lost sight of where Damon was or what direction he was heading in. 'Damn.' Damon cursed, wishing he could shift to a bird, now. The power required for such a transformation, however, was out of his grasp. Not that he couldn't change, but in that he couldn't change BACK. 'So, what else will work?'

The squeals of children and murmur of adult voices around him were the first alert Damon had to the potential for disaster that could occur. In a town as small as Fell's Church, an open and unpopulated battlefield could only be found in the deep forests or past the farmed lands. The town itself had grown to dense with people.

People that could either provide him with a meal, or die at the insane Hunter's hands. "Oh, such a marvelous bounty of choice." Damon thought with furious scorn, at both himself and the universe for the situation he was in. To fulfil his debt to Bonnie, he had to stay alive. Yet, to give the Hunter this massive opportunity to slaughter also wasn't in his best interest. Not for any humanistic reasons, but he feared that each death made the creature stronger.

It was already too strong to fight, more power would make everything a complete nightmare. There was nothing left to do but run, as hard and fast as he could until those final reserves of power were gone. Once that happened, he would be sitting dead. A wide, open and easy target for the Hunter. 'Won't little Red be disappointed?' He grinned mockingly. 'The big bad wolf axed by the Hunter.'


	8. Chapter Seven

Part Seven

_**...And Dust will be to Dust,  
Ashes but Ashes...**_

by Anya (aka Evilgoddss)

His lungs, incredibly enough, burned. The sheer fact that he could FEEL oxygen deprivation in his lungs was impressive and probably psycho-somatic. Technically speaking, he didn't need to breathe, being dead already once. However, apparently, his body wasn't interested in the mere technicalities of advanced vampirism. It just knew that he was running at quite the clip and that it wanted to stop.

How unfortunate, Damon mused bitterly as he steered his body clear of the people in the park, that the Hunter wanted him to stop just as much. The Hunter, however, had a more permanent type of "stop" in mind.

And damn but that creature could move!

'Think, Salvatore. How do you get your sorry tail out of this?' Damon ignored the body's complaints, and kept the legs moving. At the speed he was maintaining, he was breaking the residential traffic laws. The sounds of people were fading while the echoes of animals, rustle of leaves, and the burble of the major river running along the border of Fell's Church became more dominant.

'RIVER!' The idea blossomed into his mind full-formed. The river had been a major problem for Katherine, but it could be used to his advantage. Despite his dislike of boundary waters, he wasn't planning on crossing it, but going under it and down. Right down to the old crypts and passageway Katherine had used so successfully.

Down to where the dead guarded the lands against the supernatural. The dead, which owed him one helluva favor, if he counted the markers correctly.

His last bastion of power surfaced, rather like a dying man's last gasp for air. Harnessing the energy, he gave limbs new steam, and raced straight for the river, the Hunter's pace not hastening but still clearly heard behind him. 'Please let it not like water. Please let it not have any brains. Please let it be possessed by Klaus and thereby let me escape.' Damon mentally chanted. 'And if it's not too much bother while I'm humiliating myself with a few begs, please let there be a descent snack at the other end. I'm bloody starving.'

If Heaven or Hell was listening, Damon had no apparent sign of it. As far as he could tell, the odds were still 50/50. Giving no other thought to anything beyond escape, Damon pelted down, the river in sight. 'At least it's not throwing things at me.' He suddenly noted as he vaulted his body to the water.

The thought was precursor to deed, and the slam of a wooden knife into his upper back hit Damon far colder than the water that suddenly submerged him. Being in mid-air while diving for the water, though, Damon had successfully evaded a killing blow. Not that the semi-staking didn't hurt, but that it wasn't going to destroy him. 'Unfortunately.'

Now was the time to move, but the body, already taxed, fair near collapsed from the knifing. 'Come on, old man. Keep moving before---'

A hideous patchwork of flesh and bone slammed down into the water, perhaps a foot from Damon's startled eyes. Rather than dive in after him, the creature counted on Damon having fallen prone in the water and within a fishing range. 'That's it.' Damon growled silently, with his good arm, he reached up and over his shoulder, brutally jerking the knife out. Judiciously, he moved his body to where the Hunter's hand had just been and waited.

Eyes narrowed, despite the flush of water against his opened gaze, Damon's smile extended predatorily when the Hunter slammed it's hand down again, close enough to be reached, but far enough that it served Damon no threat. Smoothly, letting the buoyancy of water ease the ache of muscles, Damon moved taking the knife and sweeping it in an underhand arch in the water, point upwards, it cut through the water effortlessly, smoothly and slammed viciously right through the Hunter's hand.

Damon only waited long enough to impale the knife into the Hunter, and then tossed his body into the undertow that sped him away. Away from the creature that nearly had him in it's grip, and away from the hideous shriek that pierced even the dead sound barrier of the cold, cold water.

---------------------------

Bonnie felt her shoulder's sagging, her eyes glancing about the ruined building with profoundly sad expression. The Hunter had moved up its' kills. No longer did it make one kill site a day, now it was up to two or three. It was only a matter of time before the police began to figure out they were not up against a serial killer.

Dropping her purse in the ironically spotless metal sink, Bonnie wandered about the sweet little kitchen and gently closed opened eyes as she found the mutilated bodies. She had no idea who these people were, they were new neighbors to her parents, but she did feel that their deaths were on her hands.

The front door had been ripped off the hinges and tossed in the middle of the yard. That was the first warning sign Bonnie had physically seen. Her senses, however, had shown others and the scent of blood, heightened unnaturally by Damon's blood share with her, had led her straight to the actual crime.

Time of death, she realized staring down at the linoleum floor where blood pooled from the gory death sprawled across the kitchen table, was in the past two hours. Already, rigor mortis was setting in and the scent was fading slightly.

Given the distance between the victims, the Hunter had killed the two couples in the room within minutes of one another. The furthest a victim had made was to the small enclosure of the back door, perhaps fifteen feet from the center of carnage. 'I hate this.'

Carefully staying clear of the blood and painstakingly avoiding making footprints on the flooring, Bonnie circled the remainder of the house, noting the pristine state of the public rooms, and the rumpled sheets in the master bedroom before returning back downstairs. This time, though, she cut through the dining room and promptly froze.

_Blood roses  
Blood roses  
Back on the street now  
Blood roses  
Blood roses  
Back on the street now  
Can't forget the things you never said  
on days like these starts me thinking_

Her hand went up, to touch the liquid penmanship on the parlor doors dividing the room from the kitchen. It had been unseen from the kitchen, thanks to the lovely white curtains that were pocketed over the windows in the French doors. Inches from the words, her fingers froze, and she curled them under so that the nails bit into her palm.

"Klaus," Bonnie whispered, for a second her mind was transported back to Vickie Bennett's room once again. The moment passed, and logic kicked in. Klaus had haunted the US since the early 50's, and it was reflected in his preferred musical selection and methodology.

This message, this had a symbolic overtone and one that did not escape Bonnie. Tori Amos was a favorite of hers, and the lyrics which followed the chorus hauntingly came to mind: 'You gave him your blood, and your little diamond too'. The Hunter knew that Damon was helping her, and had targeted them both.

Intuition, in women, was a powerful tool. For those females that listened to that soft inner voice, timely warnings were often received. In Bonnie, the voice had a megaphone, and it sure knew how to bellow. Logic snapped facts in her mind within seconds, but the body started working before even that. Almost flying across rooms and through doors, Bonnie raced from the house before anyone had a chance to even notice was she had already investigated.

Damon was in danger, if not already destroyed. That kill and that message were the promise to Bonnie that the Hunter would brook no interference. 'Damn, damn, damn.' She thought furiously, bursting into her parents home with no more thought than that. Her parents were out of the state, and her sister had moved out a year ago, ensuring that no witnesses were around to Bonnie's comings and goings on the property. Neighbors, had they been alive, would have assumed it was the good daughter coming to check on the family home.

Dead, they were ghostly witnesses to the Good Witch trying to battle the forces of darkness, or something melodramatic like that. Bonnie didn't really care, either way. Punching the numbers to her apartment phone, she held the receiver impatiently at her ear, scowling darkly into the mirror facing her with each unanswered ring.

After the tenth ring, her answering machine clicked on, and Bonnie left the only intelligent message she could by slamming the receiver down. 'So, if I was a bloodsucking hunk of an Italian vampire, where would I be at 1:30 in the afternoon?' Bonnie groused, chewing on her lip in vexation.

Fingers tapped impatiently on the hard plastic of the phone, her mind hundreds of miles away. Damon had gone to the library early this morning, after visiting an initial murder site, but in all that time she had no recollection of him feeding. Perhaps he went out for a bite?

"Yeah, right." Bonnie muttered. "If I really thought that, I wouldn't be sitting here worrying about him. I must be certifiable, I'm worried about Damon. Damon, the impervious. Damon, the 'too bad to get in trouble'." The sigh was heartfelt, weary and resigned.

Somewhere in the entire scope of Fell's Church there was a Hunter, and somewhere else in that same region was one nasty bad-boy by name of Damon Salvatore. And lucky her, she had to find one but not the other. "My life just sucks."

Pulling away from the foyer of her parents home, she walked slowly, almost ritualistically up the stairs to her old bedroom. Her parents were predictable, fortunately. Rather than totally stripping the room and redecorating it, they had simply moved extra furniture in and made a spare bedroom of the space.

That meant her pentagram etched into the wood beneath the throw-rug was still undiscovered. Early, after the defeat of Klaus, Bonnie had actively begun studying the roots of her powers, and that meant researching her ancestors. Druidism, in it's modern form, was akin to but not exactly like the ancient sorcerers of the British Isles. A natural change had been to look beyond the territorial religions, and study the entire field of paganism. From there, she had found herself drawn to the earth faiths, and wiccan magick.

Her strength had always been precognitive, but she could see current events when need arose. It wasn't something she liked to do, it left her open to other sights, and some of them were unpleasant. It also made the noise in her head louder, noise her psychic range gathered from populations around her.

'The things I do for the Salvatore's,' Bonnie chuckled humorouslessly. It took a minute to roll up the carpet after shoving the bed clear. But, once that was done, Bonnie was free to take a few risks. In her apartment, she made careful use of chalk to secure her circle, and employed candles as she called the watchtowers, but there was neither the resources or time for those provisions in her parents home.

Cross-legged, Bonnie set her hands on her thighs and calmed her breathing. Eyes fluttered close, and her mind reached out using the connection of blood to isolate and find one elusive and troublesome Damon Salvatore.

The scent of grass and warmth of sun struck her senses, before cold water splashed brutally upon her psyche. This was the trail of Damon's passage, and it was marked by power and blood. 'Damon's blood.' The distant part of her mind noted, already very familiar with the fluid that was running through Bonnie's own veins.

It took her minutes to track Damon, and more minutes to shake the fog from her brain as she emerged from her trance. The images and impressions of her trances were oftimes hard to decipher, but this was not the case. Damon was in the catacombs beneath Honoria Fell's tomb, finding sanctuary amongst the long since dead. He was both hurt and hungry-and the Hunter was after him.

Knowledge gave impetus to action, and Bonnie was no slacker. Jumping up, she narrowly remembered to cover the pentagram and hastily pushed the large old bed back into place before racing downstairs. Her parents had flown out of state, leaving their car behind securely locked up in the garage. As far as Bonnie was concerned, given her loyalty as a daughter, the least they could do was lend it to her.

After all, racing to the hospital and then to the cemetery, two places on flip-sides of town from one another couldn't be accomplished quickly by foot.

------------------------------

Somehow, Damon dragged his sorry body out of the river, and onto the cold hard packed earth. Practically crawling, he found shelter underground and collapsed. Had he looked up and around, his body would have shivered to realize he was in the room where Katherine had held them prisoner, torturing him endlessly until Elena had escaped and sacrificed her life to spare both he and his brother.

The room where his world had collapsed.

Fortunately, hunger and exhaustion spared him the mental anguish, and he curled up into a tight ball like any wounded creature would. His last reserves were truly gone now, it was a matter of time before starvation destroyed him. In all the myths about vampires, there was one that was never truly explored. A lack of blood would starve a vampire just as surely as a lack of food and water would kill a human.

This was not the way he had intended to die, but it was, in his mind, a fair bit better way to die than what the Hunter had intended. Gently, he would slip into oblivion and beyond by starvation and exhaustion's rules, rather than a sudden fiery panic and then cutting pain and destruction.

Yes, this was far better, he mused almost drowsily, dark eyes closing lazily. Even now, he could feel his body relaxing for the final release. How odd, for him it was identified as death, but to a human it would be destruction of the unholy. Worldviews were funny things, especially between different species or subspecies. 'What would Bonnie call this?' His mind was full of bizarre ideas. Images of Bonnie clashed without sense in his head. One was of a frightened little rabbit, and the other a predator with a killer's sharp features.

To either image, he felt an apology was owed, but it was not in his nature to make apologies, was it? Perhaps it was the chemical imbalances that was a prelude to death. Or whatever. His limbs pulled closer, and with a weary sigh, Damon submitted to the blissful darkness.

In the catacombs beneath Fell's tombs, a deathly silence pervaded. Everything was still - the air, the dust, and even the vampire who lay upon the floor unmoving. Still and as quiet as a sanctified church, the holiness profound in the simple and gentle tranquility.


	9. Chapter Eight

Part Eight

_**...Ties that Bind...**_

by Anya

"You owe me." Bonnie reminded him, tapping her foot fast and furiously against the concrete curb. Arms folded across her chest, and her back arched slightly, she had the posture of a Warrior Goddess about to incite war.

Damon took all this in with the slightest smile curled around his mouth. The past five weeks had been nothing but an endless adventure. The cocoon Bonnie had broken free of was part of the most interesting chrysalis that Damon had ever witnessed. The rabbit was not the fox, and she was both sleek and predatorial, but very very aware of her guardianship to this town and the pathetic mortals in it.

Too bad that these charming qualities had done nothing to save yet another series of victims in the Hunter's personal campaign. "I am very aware of that, querida." He deliberately invoked the Spanish endearment, knowing it would annoy her somewhat. "However, as I have said before, I do not recall asking for your assistance."

Bonnie shrugged, choosing to ignore that small little detail. "No one ever asks for help when they lay dying." She informed him tartly. "And I went above and beyond the call of duty to get your very dead hide back to health. More so than what you did for me."

Damon rolled his eyes, but wisely kept his gaze facing towards the ruin sprawled throughout the small diner. The Hunter had feasted well, this night. By Damon's initial count, there were 32 dead in the building. The debate he and Bonnie were currently enjoying was on who would do the perimeter search. Technically, Bonnie was right, it was his turn. However, as much as he respected Bonnie's strength of will and her insight to these murder scenes, a part of his upbringing kept insisting that scenes of violent death were no place for a woman. Outdated, but ingrained, as the view were, he followed his instincts all the same.

Truth was, Bonnie had gone to extreme measures to save his sorry ass. How she'd ever dragged him from the catacombs boggled his mind, his physical mass was nearly double hers. Add to that the wit and presence of mind to steal blood supplies from the hospital and directly route the blood via intravenience into his stomach, well it rather blew his mind. For four full days his body had ceased to function, feeding in the blood and mending but without his conscious awareness. He awoke from a coma that was hauntingly like true death on the morning of the fifth day. Scaring the hell out of a dozing Bonnie in the chair beside his sickbed.

"Fine." Damon sighed, turning to see Bonnie's brown eyes almost ringed golden in the odd lighting of the small restaurant. "I will search the perimeter. Be quick in here, though. It will not be long for the police to arrive."

Bonnie brushed past him, her hands snapping on a pair of latex rubber gloves before he had finished speaking. For one moment, Damon paused to watch her, admiring the graceful way she stalked about the room, eyeing down the victims with a cool analytical expression. There was no emotion or hysteria in her face or heartbeat.

Somehow, that worried him. But the moment of concern passed as swiftly as it came, and before Bonnie crouched beside her first chosen observation, Damon had already left to search the perimeter.

Their operating procedure had developed slowly, but was a fixed routine now, having had it proved necessary the last time they had failed to make sure the area was secure and safe. Or at least, as safe as a massacre site could be.

Stalking through the alley out back, Damon willfully pushed back the memory of the last time he and Bonnie had carelessly left a murder site and walked straight into the Hunter's trap. If not for the teamwork, and the clutter of the back exit to the townhouse whose residents the Hunter had bled to death, their fight would have ended in their defeat.

Somehow, though, they did get away, and they had learned. How they had learned. Caution was not a part of Damon's life, but it was growing within him. Stepping only in the shadows he viewed as clear, and minding that his footsteps were silent, he quickly circled the building before climbing to scope the roof. The slight trail of blood that danced along the back ways were legacy to the Hunter's passage, and the gory landmarks of a human head mounted on the TV antenna were evidence to his departure. There would be a corresponding article of evidence outside of Bonnie's home.

The apartment was their only secure base now. In the days and nights that his spirit had withdrawn deep within himself to heal, Bonnie had thrown herself into usage of her burgeoning powers. The research and knowledge she had pulled was astonishing, but the effectiveness unmistakable. The wards felt incredibly strong, and there had been times when his hunger was strongest, that he'd wanted to run far away from the building. His mind and body ITCHED from energies that expressed a clear dislike of any predatory feeling.

So, while waking hungry was not a pleasant feeling, at least falling asleep knowing he would be able to wake hungry was infinitely comforting. Especially after nights like these. 'Bloody hell, there won't be a town left at the rate he's going.' Damon sighed, approaching the grotesquely displayed head without any true emotion. Like all the victims, the head had been brutally severed from the body with visible tearing. The axe of Honoria Fell's tales was not in use here. It was odd, considering the creature had always raised a weapon against both he and Bonnie.

What was it that set them apart from the others? His vampirism? It didn't make sense since the creature's primary target was the very human Bonnie.

There were no more presents to be found either on the roof or in the perimeter. Standing at the edge of the roof, he scanned the neighborhood with his senses, detecting nothing more than the odd human or two. 'Good enough.' Damon frowned. 'She'd better be done. It won't be much longer before some patron arrives.'

Jumping down, in front of the main doors, he swept inside allowing the bell's to jingle loudly. Bonnie didn't even raise her eyes from the corpse in front of her. "This one fought." She made the observation generally, as if well aware of who was behind her.

For all he knew, perhaps she was aware. The blood hadn't faded as it should have in her body. His sensitivity to her was still strong, inferring that her awareness of him was equally powerful. It was as if she'd been nurturing the blood in her system, although how or why she would do that, even unconsciously escaped him. And the true meaning or cause behind of the lingering bond continued to escape him. He simply knew it was definitely not a good thing. "How so?"

Coolly, Bonnie picked up a severed forearm and hand, a butcher's knife covered in a odd ichor still clenched in dead fingers. In another person, or another time, the sheer casual nature of her manipulation of corpses would have been alarming, but Damon knew the wall Bonnie hid her emotions and responses behind. He himself had been hiding against such a wall since the day Katherine had entered his life, centuries ago.

"So that's what its blood looks like." Damon leapt over a half wall, moving quickly to Bonnie's side. Lowering his nose to almost an inch from the blade, he sniffed, his nose creasing in disgust at the resulting smell. "Definitely not palatable."

Bonnie quirked her lips, gently lowering the remains to where their original position had been. "Big shock. It's not truly mortal or natural, even in comparison to you." The words were spoken without rancor or contempt, they were factual not vindictive or bitter. Methodically, but with indifference to her just worded observation, Bonnie rolled her sterile transparent gloves off her tiny hands, stuffing them into a small ziploc bag and then back into the back pocket of her jeans. The distraction in the task was something Damon had witnessed many times. "Let's get out of here. I think I've seen everything we need, for now."

Extracting themselves from a scene was infinitely more difficult than entering. There were so many possibilities that had to be considered and anticipated, in terms of inadvertent evidence that potentially could indite both of them as accomplices or murderers at these scenes. As of yet, given the lack of sophistication in Fell's Church PD, there wasn't too much technology employed, but intuition was also a dangerous weapon and leaving any trace of "something" was dangerous.

Bonnie's biggest voiced fear was that the death toll would reach a point soon where the FBI would be called in. And while he had not yet said anything, Damon privately agreed. Time was running out on their efforts. For four weeks, the creature had enjoyed a wild murder spree. Humans would only tolerate so much, before they combined much like the mobs of antiquity to burn out the predator.

With Bonnie and himself so enwrapped at the heart of the crises, it was very likely they to would be put on the inevitable pyre. Still, alarming Bonnie was pointless. He needed her mind and spirit intact if they were to survive. As surely as she was primary target, his open assistance of her made him secondary. There was no way out, not now.

"Clear." Damon murmured, shielding his thoughts from her with the quiet word. Companionably, they walked back to the apartment, the ease of their posture and stride all false when compared to the hyper awareness of minds. They were living in stressful times, and short of the time in the apartment, their guard could not go down. It might very well cost them their lives.

"Do you think we'll survive this whole thing?" Bonnie asked rhetorically, breaking the stillness in the night. The tiny shift in her voice was the first indication that her walls about her mind and soul weren't as solid as his. The fear for her own life, and for others was richly imbedded in the slightest rise and tension in her voice.

Looking down at her, without being too obvious to his concern for where this sudden fear would lead to, Damon carefully weighed his words. To give false hope would induce her to take chances, or relax her guard. But to give no hope risked a complete resignation to death.

All he had to offer, to both of them, was the truth, and it was a bitter pill to swallow. "I don't know, I really don't." Stefan, the virtuous, would have promised her that she would live, and Elena would have believed that no evil could strike them. Bonnie was learning the world wasn't full of such candy fluff. So, how could he offer her a positive answer when he didn't have it.

"We need to know what drove him insane this time. For sure." Bonnie sighed, accepting his words with no hesitation. They were all she could hear and believe, that there were no guarantees.

Damon snorted, staring up to a rich golden full moon. "Klaus."

"Maybe. I don't think so, though." Bonnie pulled her light spring jacket tighter across her chest as a shiver rippled through her body. "Why would he wait so long to come after me? Or to come here?"

A valid point, Damon realized with mild surprise. In his mental ramblings, that was a fragment of fact he'd never analyzed. "I never thought of that." He admitted, not to show weakness, but to clarify his standing. They needed to work together if any survival was to occur. And there had to be trust, as loathe as he was to trust anyone or have anyone put trust in him.

"So?" Bonnie's head bent down, studying the pavement passing beneath her moving feet. The pace of her heart and apathy in her actions were signs of fatigue both emotional and physical.

"So, you may have something." Damon hated saying the words. It undermined everything he'd assumed. If the creature was not hunting them because of Klaus, if the complete insanity and homicidal spree had no basis in Klaus' destruction, then why was it after Bonnie? For her power? That was counter to all that Honoria had imparted about the Hunter's to them in her journal. "And we have less than nothing to understand the creature by."

This time, Bonnie's shudder was not hidden by the jacket. "How can we understand it? It's insane. I just want to know what drove something that should be so good to become something so horrid."

Damon flicked his gaze in her direction, feeling the thrum of the link between them. The tension in her, and fear that there was something far worse awaiting her in the near future. "Perhaps that will tell us how to stop it." He offered tentatively. "There is nothing to do for it tonight. This is the fourth mass homicide the creature had made. If he follows true to form, there will be no other on this scale until Saturday." In truth, since the household family that he had burned out he'd witnessed four scenes of carnage, a surprisingly small number for nearly a total seven weeks of his occupation in the town. According to Bonnie, however, there had been five other kill-sites he'd not discovered both before and after his return. Two of them occurring while he had been comatose.

"Maybe." Bonnie sighed, looking up at the moon and then over to him. "Somehow, I have the feeling things are about to get worse. Like something wickeder is coming our way."

Damon rolled his eyes, reaching out in an unusual gesture of camaraderie, and placing his arm about her shoulders, tucking her body close to his. "How lovely. It simply MUST be Stefan."

Bonnie smiled, leaning against his supporting frame. "Gods please forbid. Can't you just hear him now?"

"Always. 'You're doing this! You're setting Bonnie up to kill her'" Damon mimed bitterly. "Oh yes, if something wicked this way comes, for me his name would be Stefan. My own personal redeeming demon."

Bonnie giggled, relaxing as they rounded the corner and saw her apartment in sight. As per usual, sprawled across the steps was the gracious gift from this night's murder. She didn't even sigh, or let the smile fade from her face. With more willpower than she thought she had left, she pushed past the horror and denied it the right to etch itself in her mind and psyche. "I wish he'd stop bringing presents."

Damon eyed the dismembered torso curiously, it was probably from the head mounted on the roof of the building. "Indeed. Flowers would be a nice change."

Bonnie paused at the path to the apartment, gazing down expressionlessly at the corpse. "He already did that, Damon. Mrs. Flowers."

Damon shook his head, stepping over the ruins of a body and up the stairs. Bonnie stood where she was, staring down with neither awareness or concern for her isolation in an open unguarded area. The Hunter wanted her to see the dead, it wanted her to scream or break at these offensive gifts.

"Go inside, Bonnie." Damon instructed her, appearing as if out of thin air, a green plastic garbage bag in hand. "I'll deal with this."

A gift and a blessing, Bonnie realized almost numbly. Not from the death or the murders, but from her own mental exhaustion that seemed to sweep her body as soon as she entered the guarded apartment. Damon was repaying his debt to her by sheltering her sanity.

Amazing what friendships could be born in trying times, she thought with a small lifeless smile. The coat fell to the floor by the door, and her shoes were kicked off before she left the entry hallway. 'A shower. I need a shower.' She decided, fingering the cotton T-shirt she was wearing. The stench of blood and waste products that littered the restaurant seemed to embed itself in her clothing, and suddenly all she could think of was getting out of such garments and feeling clean again.

The shirt was on the floor in the hallway, and the jeans just outside the bathroom door. Her bra and panties hit the ground inside the bathroom mere seconds before the water hit her body. The luxury of hot water, and soothing bliss of a soap on skin that crawled gave a quick restorative to her tried and tormented soul. In minutes, the body recouped and began making other more mundane demands - like food and drink.

Heaving a giant sigh, Bonnie shoved the water control to the off position, and wrung her hair. 'I feel like some sort of robot.' She realized, wondering if that was how Damon saw her actions. 'There's no feeling. Just-emptiness--- when we find them.'

Her fighting skills were improving, though. Damon's frustrations at the stalemate against the Hunter had to have an outlet. Given the violence in his past and the lifestyle of his choosing, it was only natural that his outlets were very brutally physical - and he dragged Bonnie along for the ride. 'Ah, it's good for me.' She vigorously toweled her red hair dry, before patting down her body with the soft cloth. 'Otherwise, I'd have nothing to vent through. Crying isn't solving anything, so move on, McCullough.'

Her terry-cloth robe was hanging on the back of the door, where she'd deliberately been leaving it since Damon had become her houseguest. Shrugging into it, she belted it tightly and padded barefoot to the kitchen, absently picking up her filthy clothes as she went and bundling them into the wet towel.

The fridge was better stocked, now. Taking time away from her days, despite the fact she'd moved to an almost nocturnal pattern, Bonnie was weekly obtaining both food for herself, and blood for Damon. The first from the grocery store, and the second from the hospital. It disgusted her to use her powers to cloud minds the way she was at the hospital, but walking out with a cooler of blood was otherwise not possible. And she far rather have obtained the blood this way than to allow Damon to feed on the living.

Too many were dying without that additional predator on the loose.

The sandwich steaks were sitting in the careful butcher shop wrap, her planned meal for this night. Lifting them out, and tossing a kaiser onto the counter, Bonnie set about the task of making a quick dinner. Engrossed in the saut‚ing of onions and mushrooms to accompany her steak, she never heard Damon enter or saw him feed at the kitchen table from one of the cold plastic bags of blood.

She felt him, though. Felt his presence behind her and the faintest thread of his hunger. "I buried it." He announced unnecessarily as the bag was emptied. "Far enough away to keep the police away from here."

"Good." Bonnie sighed, piling the steak and trimmings onto the soft fresh whole- wheat kaiser. Calmly, she sliced the sandwich in half, her fingers not even trembling to hold a knife, despite all the cuts and tears that she was practically seeing daily in human flesh. With one hand, she carried a plate over to the table, the other hand judiciously tucked her robe more discretely across her body. "I've been thinking," She began, almost idly as she picked up half the sandwich. "About the reasons why the Hunter is insane. Could I be the reincarnation of Shiri?"

Damon folded the bloodbag in half, and then half again. Small actions to keep the elegant hands busy. His blue ring winked at her, as his fingers moved. "Perhaps, but I don't feel anything from you like that, not before when Klaus was here and not since. So I fail to see how the Hunter could perceive you as anything more than simply human."

Bonnie nodded, chewing in silence on her sandwich. Her eyes beckoned him on.

"I'm wondering if it doesn't have something to do with what draws my kind, Klaus' kind, to this town." Damon sat very still, choosing words that he could elaborate on. "There's a magnetism to Fell's Church, powers that call to powers."

"A crossroads." Bonnie mumbled. "A convergence of lines of power in one place."

Damon studied her, interested. "In this town?"

Red hair bounced as she nodded. "Yeah. It's focused in the catacombs that I found you in, the river leads to it, Honoria's tomb lead to it, hell, even the entire town seems to lead to it."

A convergence was an unusual, thin border between reality and non-reality. That next plane of existence lay beyond, the realm only psychics and the supernatural could sense and see. To control a center of convergence would be tempting to any of great power. Damon himself even toyed briefly with the notion, before dismissing it as too great a task. "It might have done it." He mused.

Bonnie polished off the last half of her sandwich as Damon considered possibilities. Pushing her plate back, she rattled his cage some more. "There's one more thing." She murmured. "I've been doing some math."

"Congratulations." Damon offered dryly, black eyes glinting with sardonic amusement.

"Shutup." Bonnie folded her arms across her chest. "My dreams began the day Matt left me. They escalated the day after Stefan and Elena told me of their upcoming trip. And they dropped off the day they left. Exactly one day after they departed, the Hunter began attacking."

"It's tied into my brother?"

Bonnie shook her head. "No, it's tied into Matt. And I think the tie is Kiera."


	10. Chapter Nine

Part Nine

_**...Lost Inside a Scream...**_

by Anya

"Well, that was fun." Bonnie sighed, throwing herself into the old armchair her parents had given her when she had moved out. Burrowing deep into the soft tweed-like fabric, she tugged a soft cotton blanket off the back of the chair, and snuggled into it. "Can we not do that again?"

Tossing a roll of tape onto two unpacked boxes, Damon grunted in agreement, since his mouth was busy securing one corner of tape. Stretching the plastic tarp that was the make-shift window covering, he held it taut with one hand and taped it with the other. "I would still like to know how you made them leave." He muttered, stepping back to eye his handiwork. It wasn't perfect, but at least the shattered glass was swept up and the window was secured for the night.

"IthreatenedtostakeStefan." Bonnie quietly mumbled into his abstraction, her fingers pulling at the tassels that formed the blanket fringe. It hadn't been a restful evening, to say the least. She was overtired to start with, her sleep last night disturb by horrible dreams, some of which she had a dreadful fear were less than dreams and more like prescient glimpses into her future. Adding into that the murder scene she and Damon had discovered, plus Stefan and Elena's return, and it just made Bonnie physically and spiritually exhausted.

Dark eyes nearly closed, she studied the soft cotton strands of the tassels, her index finger poking at it relentlessly. The warmth and security of her apartment was violated. Always before, death had remained on the outside, whereas now it felt as if it was in her own home.

"Are you alright, little one?" Damon's touch was oddly gentle. His coldness from earlier tonight gone. Gently, he pushed back strands of hair, tucking it behind her ear. "I know that seeing my brother and Elena was not---"

Bonnie shook her head, dropping the edge of the blanket to reach up and snag his fingers. "It isn't Stefan or Elena. Not really. I'm just tired. So very tired." She sighed. His fingers were cool to the touch, rather as if he'd spent time out in the cold air of a spring morning.

Damon tightened his fingers around hers, deftly pulling her up before scooping her into his arms like a small infant. "Come, I think you are indeed tired." He commented, easily carrying her down the softly lit hallway to her bedroom. "And if you seriously expect to successfully stake my little brother, you will need to actually sleep through the entire night."

"Day." Bonnie corrected mechanically, indulgently letting her head rest on his shoulder. It was a familiarity in touch that neither had encouraged before, but the stress of the night was such that she suspected they both needed one solid ally in each other's corner. Having Stefan call him the bad-guy, as used to it as Damon was, could not have been easy.

"Day." Damon agreed, pushing the heavy wooden door open with his foot. The warmth of her body against him was reassuring. It represented another day they had both survived intact, despite the ups and downs of it. Carefully setting her down onto the bed, her tugged down the topmost cover, before reaching to pull off Bonnie's shoes. She just lay back listlessly, the dark shadows under her eyes a reminder of how poorly she'd slept yesterday. "And, as an early birthday gift-" he said mockingly, tapping her nose with one finger. "I will graciously allow you to have the bed."

"So gracious." Bonnie yawned. "Since it's my bed."

Damon smiled, that little quirk of the lips that he reserved for his genuine amusement. "Is it really?" He queried with just a touch of amazement. "I had no idea!"

"Smart aleck." Bonnie mumbled, scrambling under the covers fully clothed and indifferent for the possible discomfort. "I'm amazed you've survived this long. Surely someone's wanted to stake you for that clever mouth you have."

"Many have tried, all have failed." Damon quipped. Gently pulling the covers over her, he stroked her soft red hair once, pleased as the eyes drifted closed. "Rest, Cara."

Her breathing was even, but not quite that of sleep. And while he could hear her heartbeat begin to slow to that torpid pace of a sleeper, he had to wonder if it would stay so calm. It seemed to him that last night had been the worst she'd had. Even a room away, he'd heard the restlessness of her sleep, the rabid staccato of her heartbeat, and the soul-tearing whimpers from the dreams that plagued her.

The sad thing was, though, that it hadn't been the first night he'd heard such noise. However, it had been the first time she'd awakened with a scream on her mouth from a solid sleep. 'Yet, she says nothing of her dreams.'

Switching off the lights, he left the door cracked at the hallway lit, in case she again awoke in a similar state. It bothered him, more than he liked, that she was having nightmares. Not for the fact she was in mental turmoil and sleeping poorly, but for that the prolonged blood-bond between them leaked nothing of the subject for her dreams to him.

'It's her own abilities generating them.' Damon mused, entering the kitchen with only his thoughts for company. 'Foresight? Perhaps.' Cold blood was repulsive, but for the sake of his housemates sensibilities, Damon never poured it into a mug and microwaved it unless the house was either empty or completely still.

He set the microwave for ten seconds longer, ending the cycle prematurely to prevent the buzzing for fear it would disturb the redhead down the hall. 'Although, she fell asleep fast. I doubt the Hunter could rouse her if he was in her room.'

A yawn tore through him, to his bemused surprise, as he wandered back to the rather bedraggled living room. A quick look around assured him that all was as he and Bonnie had left it, though his imagination easily put Stefan back where he'd last seen his brother, the stunned and idiotic look on his face immortalized in Damon's brain. "Idiot." Damon growled, his frustration rising again. If only they hadn't come back so soon.

Easing down into the chair recently vacated by Bonnie, Damon propped his feet on the coffee table and studied the world through the crinkled plastic over the window. Time was not on their side. The Hunter had upped the ante tonight by tossing the body into the apartment. Identifying the factor that had caused the change was not easy. So many new elements had entered the mix in the past few hours, too many to narrow one definitive factor.

It would have been easy to blame Stefan, but in his gut, Damon knew that to be wrong. "So, what of this Kiera person." He mused. For all that he had brushed aside Bonnie's speculations, it wasn't for the reasons she thought.

Yes, he suspected she was somewhat jealous of the girl for laying claim to Matt, but Bonnie was not one to nurture jealousy to this point. There was obviously something more to Bonnie's claims against Kiera, but nothing that Damon could substantiate until he saw Matt's girlfriend himself.

"But, the sorcery is new." He muttered, his thoughts jumbling fast and furious. "Never before, until they returned, have we experienced this. Interesting." Nothing in Honoria's records suggested the Hunter was capable of magic, and the creature had not demonstrated such talents earlier. 'Would it not have used sorcery to capture Bonnie when it had the chance earlier? If it was capable, why did it not?'

It suggested the creature was not working alone. 'Or, is being coerced by a sorcerer.' Damon sipped his beverage slowly, wrapping his mind around new ideas. "Could be." He mumbled aloud to the still air about him. "I wonder if---"

Bonnie's scream preceded his mug shattering on the floor. Vampiric speed made him a blur as he raced through the small apartment and burst into her room. A quick glance around made Damon back down from fighting stance, but not for long.

Bonnie was rigid, her eyes wide and unseeing and her face bloodless. Sitting ramrod straight in the bed, fingernails digging into the arms she clutched, she saw nothing and was aware of no one. 'She dreams?' He wondered, keeping as still and silent as possible.

Nothing around the girl moved, even the rise and fall of her chest seemed to be stilled, although he could hear the rhythm of her lungs and the beat of her heart. "Bonnie?" Damon called softly, mindful of the dangers in awakening someone who sleepwalked. As she presently was, it was hard to discern if she was a sleepwalker, or trapped into the subconscious reality.

A hesitant step towards her became a lunge as a thin scratch weeping blood formed across her neck. Eyes shooting wide with alarm, Damon grabbed Bonnie's upper arms and shook her. "BONNIE!" He roared, feeding her a jolt of power.

Brown eyes lit like gold, as it had in the catacombs before. It was the vampire presence of his blood, and for once, Damon rejoiced in seeing it. Diving deep into her mind with his own powers, he struggled to find a reality he could grasp. The mind and the subconscious were not aspects of powers vampires used. This was the realm of the witches and psychics.

However, the bond between Bonnie and himself lent a little control to him, and he used it to find the shining beacon of Bonnie's soul. Dark reds and blacks mired thickly in her mind, glowing with a malefic power born of pain and cruelty. This was the substance of her dreams, the promises of death and horror that disrupted her sleep.

Inured to such nightmares in that he had already experienced death's touch, Damon brushed through it without care until he found a tiny pocket of energy resisting the darkness around it. 'Bonnie' He realized. It took strength of will to touch that energy, to merge with it and feed it his own strength.

It took far less strength, though, when merged, to guide her into driving the darkness away and purging her mind.

And it took no strength to fling his awareness back into his body, just in time to see consciousness return to Bonnie's eyes. Her heartbeat was again racing, a furious pump that represented fear and adrenaline in the blood supply. Gathering her close, he tucked her head beneath his chin and fed his power into her trembling little body, sharing his strength until she could build her own reserves.

"I can't do this anymore." She moaned, her face burrowing into his shirt. "I can't. I just can't."

Wordlessly, Damon rubbed at her back, offering her the comfort she needed but no guarantees. "It will be over soon, Querida." He finally pledged, certain of that one fact, as the soft sobs shaking her shoulders ended. "But, you must be strong."

Bonnie shook her head, the weariness that dragged her down finally breaking her willpower. "I can't."

"You can." Damon promised, thinking of the young woman who'd so casually picked up a dismembered arm, and the fiery little witch who'd stared Klaus down. "And you will."

Bonnie sucked back a sob, digging deep to find an ounce of strength. "I'm going to die, Damon." She said in a whisper. "I know it. It's in my dreams, and it's been with me for weeks. I'm going to die, and I don't think I care anymore."

Damon's arms reflexively tightened. "It is nothing but a dream. A possibility without foundation."

Bonnie chuckled. "But, a possibility that grows. How can we beat it? It's stronger now, it wants me, and now we have to run around with Stefan on our tails? We're so screwed."

Damon's hand slowed, stilling on her back for a moment. "Stefan, we can stake." He commented lightly. "And when we find the sorcerer who has changed the rules, then we will find a way to beat the Hunter. I know this."

It seemed to take forever, but the tension in Bonnie began to fade. Softly rubbing her back, cradling her as if a small child, Damon listened as she purged the horrors of her dreams, of her visions of her own death. The consistency in the dreams, the escalation in the details was alarming. Even more so was the content. Bonnie had never read Honoria's description for the way a Hunter slew an Old One, but she was describing it perfectly.

Perhaps he was wrong about her. Perhaps Shiri was indeed reborn, this time as a mortal.

'Then why the gifts? The need to claim and possess?' Damon's logical side argued. 'Why the slaughter?'

He had no answers, only volumes of questions he dared not share with the girl he cradled. "You need sleep." He finally told her as she fell silent. "Stefan will be back early, we both know this, and you will never stake him if you cannot stand upright." He chided gently.

Carefully, he released her, tucking her back into the bed. Reaching once more for the covers, his mind reeling with so many possibilities, he froze when Bonnie's hand touched his wrist. "Bonnie?"

She licked her lips nervously, her eyes so weary and pleading that he felt his undead heart ache for her. "Stay?" A girl he'd never thought to see beg put her entire soul into one word. "Please?"

"Stefan will return in mere hours." He reminded her, his body frozen to the spot.

Beneath the covers, Bonnie shrugged. "That's his problem." She sighed. "I just don't want to be alone. Not anymore. I can't do it alone."

It should have been an easy decision, Damon marveled, gazing down at her. Was it only a few months ago that he'd have just said sure and jumped into the bed for a quick tumble and a hot meal?

But, Bonnie wasn't asking for sex or intimacy, just company. The problem was, he was just now realizing that he was already too attached to her. The world in which he had once walked alone was gone, he'd let a mere mortal in and called her friend. And her inherent death would make his soul bleed.

"Please, Damon? Just for tonight." The soul shining in her eyes tugged at him, and as he kicked off his shoes and stripped off his shirt, he realized he was already bleeding on the inside.


	11. Chapter Ten

Part Ten

_**Grim Reality**_

by Anya (by Evilgoddss)

She was gone by the time he woke. Sprawled on her bed, one arm stretched across the fading warmth of the mattress where she had laid, consciousness was a gradual thing that Damon acclimated to. Going from a state very much like true death to waking un-death was not the most natural thing in the world, and in Damon's case he truly proved what a morning person he wasn't.

Especially with Stefan standing a scant five feet from him screaming obscenities that would make their very desiccated mother spin in her grave. "You SLEPT with her!" Stefan bellowed. "You son-of-a-bitch, you USED her like you did all those other… Did you bite her too? Give her the nightmares and other problems that come to your victims? " Standing in the doorway, Stefan was a black thundercloud of doom. "You fed from her and exchanged blood. Didn't you? How many times? Did you learn nothing with Elena? What happens if she changes?"

"Shut-Up." Damon growled. He had never been a morning person when alive centuries ago. Slowly, black eyes slitted open with reluctance. Ignoring Stefan's spastic comments hadn't made his baby brother wander away to grumble elsewhere, but he knew full well that responding to them wasn't going to shorten his visit from little brother either. "It is none of your business what Bonnie and I do."

Stefan's green eyes widened, narrowed and then burst into fiery life just as he pounced. Slamming his fist into Damon's jaw with a fierce force, his face shifted into the predatory elegance of a vampire. "You god-damned bastard." Stefan hissed, striking again.

Laziness vanished under the first punch. Rising up with more power than his brother had ever borne, Damon tossed Stefan across the room, wincing as the younger Salvatore struck and shattered Bonnie's full-length mirror. 'Ah, I'll replace it.' He promised her silently.

Tossing back the coverlets, he stood with hands on his hips and glared down at Stefan haughtily. "Tell me, Little Brother. Do you make love to Elena in your clothes?" He asked pointedly. "Do you seduce her into a feeding while both fully dressed and absolutely exhausted when the battle has finished and your survival has been bought for yet one more day?"

Stefan shrugged shards of glass off his shirt, coming back to his feet in a half-crouch. Eyes swept up and down Damon. Taking in the dark jeans but the naked chest and feet, Stefan had to reluctantly admit that his accusation of intimacy between his brother and the young witch seemed more and more unlikely. "Why were you in her bed then?"

"Sleeping." Damon tossed the comment with a wealth of sarcasm. "Tell me, little brother, just what is it that YOU do in beds?"

Bonnie had obviously been up long before him and not left hastily. His t-shirt was neatly folded on the small chair beside the bed and his shoes arranged at the foot of the chair. Picking up the shirt, he slipped it over his head quickly and then stepped into his shoes with bare feet. Stefan had fallen silent in the few seconds it took for Damon to become fully dressed, an unusual thing to be sure. "Yes?" Damon asked, feeling like there had to be a question in his brother's mind.

"What happened to your back?" Stefan's voice was low, sullen. "It's scarred."

Damon's mouth grimaced, but he held back from reaching towards his back with one hand. The white scars permanently marring his flesh were a permanent reminder of his own mortality. The long days and nights of healing, the tension of whether or not he'd have time to heal, and the struggle to stay conscious… all jagged reminders of the vulnerability of his immortal flesh. "The Hunter happened." He answered, stepping past Stefan as he left the bedroom. The wards still held around the apartment, his head itched furiously from the magic interference that only struck him while he was hungry.

Turning his back to Stefan probably wasn't wise, given the natural hostility between them and now his brother's inane curiosity, but still, Damon didn't care what his little brother thought or did. Padding barefoot to the kitchen, he felt Stefan shamble behind him spluttering questions that he blithely ignored.

Discretely tucked into the fridge was a dark tinted wine-bottle. It was tripe and commercial, but also an excellent way to disguise the deep burgundy fluid that was his nourishment. "Want some?" He offered in a bland tone of voice. "It's human, I warn you."

"HUMAN?" Stefan's shock was entertaining. "Where did you…"

"Bonnie." Damon shrugged casually, struggling to hide the smirk lurking below the surface. It was a leading statement, the kind of careful phrasing he used to cruelly tease his little brother's sense of nobility and honor. It worked. The hackles were rising and he felt Stefan struggle to harness scant power just to blast at him. "She took it from the hospital supply." He added as an afterthought.

"Damon…" Stefan growled. "Stop playing the bloody games."

"I'm not playing any game." He shrugged, pouring the rich thick blood into a dark coffee cup and setting it in the microwave. "At least," A wry smile quirk his lips with the concession, "Not with Bonnie." Turning slightly, Damon's rested his hip against the countertop with casual ease, as if he'd spent his entire life lounging about this kitchen.

"Why? Why not with Bonnie? What's making her so damn special in your world?" Stefan stalked about the small kitchen in a rather bizarre style of pacing, the angry glares he threw towards Damon paired with the prowling making it a hostile act rather than nervous.

Damon snorted, eyes fixed on the digital counter on the microwave. "You do think you know me so very well, don't you baby brother? As if you were Christ to my Lucifer. The arrogance is truly appalling, and very Salvatore of you. A trait, no doubt, of our dearly departed father." He hauled his mug out before the buzzer rang, draining the cup in a quick slug. "Though, to the point of your inquiry: Bonnie is not of your business, nor of your concern." The mug was slammed down into the sink, the force very nearly enough to shatter the earthenware.

"She's my friend." Stefan growled back.

Damon's short bark of laughter was derisive. "And you show that friendship in so many wonderful ways. Let me guess, when I found her dying in the catacombs, you were writing her a postcard from Paris?"

"Dying?" Stefan's green eyes widened impossibly. The white face paled even more, horror creeping in to his expression and posture. So many things clicking into place, so many possibilities about what he had sensed, about Bonnie's anger and hostility towards her friends. "She... "

"Died." It took willpower to deliberately recall that moment and not shy away from it. Bonnie's ashen face and her fading heartbeat as he held her in his arms, vainly trying to force her to drink his blood held the power to frighten him now as it angered him then. "That was the only time we exchanged blood. Just enough to keep her alive."

"She…" Stefan shook his head with dismay, sinking slowly into a chair as shock seeped in. The changes in Bonnie, the power she held, the anger and her connection to Damon all so clearly understood now. "That's why she feels..."

Damon felt his eyes flash in anger, a low growl under his voice. "No." He argued. Oh, he knew it was denial of a sort, but he just couldn't accept that his blood had not faded from her system after seven weeks. That she still hovered on a vampiric edge, regardless of how she felt to other vampires. "That was over seven weeks ago, little brother."

Stefan swallowed convulsively. "She was dead, though. She died... what if..."

"She died before I gave her the blood." The shout was full of anger. Whether at himself, at Stefan or at Bonnie, Damon didn't know. "I owed her, Stefan. She saved our lives, and she deserved better than to die like that. Her back was shredded with claw-marks, her chest ripped open and a dagger sunk four inches into her back easily puncturing a lung or more. She deserved better than a cold lonely death in the sewers of this town."

"I -- I'm not arguing that." Stefan sank down into the kitchen chair with resignation. "Oh, God. What have we done? We should have been here."

"Yes." Damon nodded, jerking the fridge open and pulling out a full blood-bag. Conversations with his brother always left him aching for more blood. Sip'n'serve style, he shoved the bag into the microwave and heated it up too. "You should have. You should have been with her when she went to Mrs. Flowers and found the old lady being gutted. You should have been here when she discovered a busload of butchered children. You should have been here to comfort her and bolster her up when she had given up and just wanted to die in peace."

He turned about, fixing his brother with a gaze so intent it was paralyzing. "You should have been here to fight at her side."

"But we weren't. You were." Stefan whispered, finally accepting the truth that Damon was presenting. "So. What do we do to make things right now?"

"Go away?" Damon snorted mirthlessly. "This isn't a wound you can bandage, Stefan. You failed her. You took her friendship for granted and then took off. Bonnie had to make do for herself, and I know she did the best she could. It wasn't enough, not against a Hunter. Not on her own."

"But you..."

Damon looked up to the ceiling, gazing absently at the lights. There were cobwebs, faint strands of dust forming a poorly shaped web in the hollow of the ceiling lamp. In some ways, that fragile web was his life, and his connections to the world around him. "But me." It was almost a sigh. "I don't know what will happen, Little Brother." His voice lacked the trademark scorn, he felt as defeated and desperate as he had on that horrid night when Klaus had borne down on them. "I rather doubt our survival."

The dismay on Stefan's face was obvious, as was his concern. "I see." He nodded grimly. "Then, what is it that we are up against?" To give Stefan his credit, he didn't back away from offering help even when he knew he was late to the party. And, Damon was too weary, too stressed by this never-ending nightmare to allow his ego and pride prevent him from building a stronger army. Survival meant everything to him, otherwise he'd never have drunk Katherine's blood so many centuries ago.

His acceptance of Stefan's silently given offer was in his eyes and body language. Wordlessly, Damon poured the blood from the soft bag into two glasses and slid one across to his brother. The message was clear. Stefan was useless to him without the human blood to enhance his waning powers. Midnight dark eyes watched, half-lidded, as Stefan tentatively sipped at the blood. Silence, heavy in the kitchen with all the weight of their angry feud hanging between them, loomed oppressively, but the common threat united them all the same.

Some day, he knew, the air between them had to be cleaned. Maybe, if they all survived this then he'd take the time to find forgiveness for and in his little brother. Maybe. If they survived.

"Apparently, there are supernatural enemies of the Originals wandering around the Earth. Created by a higher power, they are nothing more than serial killers designed only to hunt and kill the Originals." Damon cradled his glass between the palms of both hands, his gaze fixed on the ruby contents within while he spoke, but lifting to pin Stefan with the truth of the message.

Stefan's eyes did an incredible display of shooting wide, but he said nothing, just took another healthy swallow from the cup.

"Our little killer has gone rogue." Damon scratched the back of his neck absently. His hair was getting a little long and desperately in need of a trim; there were small curls forming at the nape. "Bonnie and I have batted around some theories, and the best we've come up with is that either this rogue has gone insane or is being controlled by a sorcerer or witch of some sort for their own purpose and has gone insane by route of the controlling."

Stefan grunted, his fingers spinning the glass in a slow controlled circle on the tabletop. "Which would explain why Bonnie is a target. She'd be the most likely threat to such an individual."

"Yes." Damon nodded. "However, yesterday was our first demonstration of sorcery, so the plot thickens. The other possibility comes from Honoria."

"Fell?" Stefan choked on his blood. "The Honoria Fell? Who claimed she was done helping the last time she cryptically spouted off?"

Damon grinned humorlessly. "The very same. Apparently, Bonnie dragged her kicking and screaming out of retirement. And then there was her diary." It was pinned to the fridge, the folded up note that he'd stolen from the old book's inseam. "Grab that yellow sheet there." He instructed his brother, jerking his chin to the fridge.

Stefan nearly dislocated his hips by the way he jumped and stretched his body over at the same time. His eagerness, while amusing, was precipitous. "Try not to tear it, Stefan." Damon commented dryly. "The sheet is fragile, and old."

Stefan's fingers froze a scant inch above the paper. With great care, he removed the magnet securing it and lifted it as if it was the holy grail. "Where did you get it?" Stefan asked. "It's rather thick, very pulp-based. I'd guess it to be over 200 years old."

"There about." Damon nodded. "Since it came from the lining of Fell's diary." Taking the sheet from his brother, he smoothed it out. "Essentially, this is the recounting of Gul, Shiri and a Hunter. Gul comparable to Klaus, Shiri comparable to you although, without your vices, and the Hunter? A complication and amoral creature without care."

"You're trimming corners, Damon." Stefan slid the page to his side of the table, eyes nimbly skipping across the faded words. His frown deepened as he read. "Shiri was an Original." He blinked at his brother. "She stopped Gul?"

Damon shrugged. "Checks and balances, little brother. Checks and balances."

"And the Hunter killed her."

"That's not the important part." Damon interjected.

"So, what is the important part?"

Damon rolled his eyes. "The Hunter went insane after being denied it's prey. After Shiri escaped him, it went insane with want for that kill." Damon paused, fingers tapping lightly on the table. "It... it's possible that Bonnie is the reincarnation of Shiri."

Stefan's eyebrows found a permanent home in his hairline. "Bonnie?"

Damon shrugged. "I've denied her theory to her, but... I saw her reaction to my blood. You've seen yourself how long the blood-tie is lasting. That shouldn't be, unless there's another catalyst in play, such as her incarnation as an Original in the past."

"And the Hunter's obsession for her is because of that spiritual incarnation." Stefan whispered hoarsely, his eyes opening wide. "It's insane because it wants to kill her, confused because she's not an Original but is the same essence of what escaped him before..."

Damon smiled mirthlessly. "As they say in Church: Bingo." It was almost a relief to share his suspicions. Telling Bonnie she was way off base had been the most difficult thing he had ever done. Clouding the truth was one thing, but in it was her life on the line, and letting her believe she was meant to die would defeat them before the battle even began.

Stefan seemed mired in his thoughts, his brow still furrowed. The early afternoon hour often reduced their kind to less action and more thought, regardless of the jewelry that protected them from death under the sun's rays. Of course, Stefan was always thinking, usually convoluted thoughts that complicated things far more than necessary.

Thoughts that inevitably made things more difficult for Damon. "Stefan." Damon's voice cracked like a whip. His brother's head snapped up when it was just beginning to sag down. "Stop thinking. You'll make a mess. There's nothing to be done for it, except to find a way to kill the Hunter."

"But, what if Bonnie..."

"Don't go there." Damon shot back. 'Don't ever go there.' His mind continued softly, silently. The first true friend he could recall in his long life, and he couldn't stand the thought that Bonnie might not walk the earth much longer.

"But..."

Damon's eyes closed, then opened, the steel in them grim. "Stefan, must you persist?"

"Where is she right now, Damon? What if the Hunter has already found her? It's not limited to the night, after all."

Damn him. Damn him and all his noble knightly good intentions. Damon grit his teeth together fiercely, so much so his gums hurt. "I don't know where she is." He bit out. "And I have to believe that the blood tie between her and I would tell me if she was in danger."

Stefan's eyes flew from his brother to the yellowed paper and back up again. "What if she changes? Will she be like us, or like Klaus? Will we have to destroy her too?"

The image of Bonnie's golden eyes flashed in Damon's memory, that eerie presence and power that should not have existed in a mortal woman. Was that Shiri? Was that the power of an Original, the essence of an Original or her reaction to his blood? "I really don't know, Stefan. I just don't know."


	12. Chapter Eleven

Part Eleven

_**...An lo' the Angel of Death came upon them...**_

by Anya (aka Evilgoddss)

Bonnie tossed her purse onto the floor the instant she stepped into the washroom. Ignoring the annoyed looks of some of the women using the facility, she blithely commandeered sink and turned the water onto cold.

The day just couldn't get any worse. Not at all. Short of being decapitated, which in her honest opinion would be an improvement, there wasn't a single thing to make the day worse. "Someone stake me." She muttered, splashing cold water onto her face, body bent over the sink and head propped by her hands to keep it from falling into the water entirely.

All she had wanted was a few hours of undisturbed quality time on a computer. Just a few hours to hack away at her manuscript and get the damn thing finished before this vendetta of the Hunter reached the apex. It was so close to completed… if she survived this little adventure, she could do the edits, if she didn't, her editor could have it edited post-mortum. 'Charming line of thoughts, McCullough.' She smirked into the mirror.

Sadly, her desire for peace and quiet was too much to ask for. Elena and Meredith had grim stubbornness written all over their faces when they tracked her down at one of the computers in the public library. With barely one full day of solid rest behind her (and needing about six weeks more but doubting her new teddy-bear would be so accommodating) Bonnie just wasn't prepared to handle the Queen of Fell's Church and the Princess Royal.

"Maybe alcohol would help?" She muttered, wincing at the ache in her back from the awkward position she was still in. "Or a bullet to the brain."

Was it too unreasonable to expect her alleged friends to support her decisions? To accept that Damon was her friend and ally, to understand that she just couldn't forgive them with the flick of a switch? Couldn't they just back off?

'Well, no… now that you mention it. Elena's a pit-bull with her jaw locked on a nice juicy hunk of meat.' Bonnie splashed more water on her face, sighing as the droplets dripped off her nose. 'And Meredith just wants to put you back in your pretty little box like the good china doll you're supposed to be.'

There was a definite ache in her back now. And her shoulders were starting to throb. 'Might as well go back and face my firing squad.' She frowned down into the porcelain curve of the sink. If she didn't go back, Elena would just violate the sanctity of a retreat. And being cornered in a bathroom, with no escape at all was not on Bonnie's lists of things to do. "I should have stayed in bed with Damon and waited for Stefan to come pitch a fit." She muttered irritably. "It can't get any worse."

Of course, those were famous last words. The bustle around her had faded as the women left the small washroom, leaving Bonnie to her own grumpy thoughts and mutterings. The peace, however, was short lived.

"Bonnie McCullough." The insipid voice was only partially drowned by the roar of the flushing toilet as the stall opened. "Fancy seeing you in the public library!" Kiera's wide red-lipped smile and sparkling eyes had no warmth to them, it was a cold predator eyeing down prey.

"I stand corrected." Bonnie muttered under her voice, shutting off the water and blotting her face with a paper towel. "Kiera. Darn. You survived your little trip. You couldn't conveniently get hit by a tour bus, huh?"

"And you survived my Hunter."

Instantly, Bonnie stiffened. HER hunter? Other than the gang that had been at her place last night, of which Matt had not been party to, the population of Fell's Church was unaware of what was making the series of killings. "Claiming ownership, now?" She mocked lightly, her mind racing furiously. "Maybe you should try a pit-bull. They tend to bite a little harder."

Kiera sniffed, moving to the sink beside Bonnie to wash her hands. "You know what I mean, McCullough." She bit out, voice low and threatening. "Do you know what I had to go through to entrap that creature? To ensorcell it to do my bidding?"

The white foaming soap on Kiera's hands was more appropriate being in her mouth to show the world how mad she had to be. "You broke a Hunter." Bonnie nodded, clucking her tongue off the roof of her mouth. The pieces of the puzzle were just falling into place. She wasn't the reincarnation of an Ancient, she was Matt's ex. "Let me guess, you wanted to kill off the population of Fell's Church but didn't want to get blood on your lily white hands or break a nail."

The other woman's laugh was chilling for the depths of insanity it harbored. "No silly, I wanted it to kill you. Everyone else was just a side-effect I hadn't really anticipated. No harm, no foul – well, except that you're not dead."

Bloody marvelous. It was all Bonnie could do to just stare at her. "You're insane." She hissed after a long moment, while Matt's girlfriend touched up her lipstick. "Do you know what you've done this town because you have a vendetta against me?"

Kiera shrugged without a care in the world weighing her down. "Don't care." Pausing in the act of touching up her mascara, she glanced out of the corner of her eyes at the fuming redhead. "How did you survive, by the way? I gave explicit instructions."

Brown eyes narrowed, fire building within. If she were even a hint more like Damon, or as ruthless as Kiera, she had power enough to fry the woman's brains inside out. However, there was no guarantee that would stop the Hunter. "Carefully." She hissed. "Very carefully."

"Try to be less careful." Kiera waved the mascara wand at her vaguely. "I need you to die before the next full moon. It's very important."

'I'm freakin' Alice and I'm fallen down the rabbit hole, haven't I?' Bonnie stared hard at the elegant profile of Kiera's face, torn between wrapping her hands around the girl's neck or running the hell away. Still, there were unanswered questions that needed to be resolved. Like, the importance behind the next full moon. "Why's that?" She tried for that light conversational tone, the mindless '_don't mind me, nothing worrisome here to get excited about._'

Kiera smiled, her expression chilling and predatorial. "Klaus, dear girl. You are my ticket to freeing Klaus – and my immortality. All that power." Her eyes closed as she breathed in an air of anticipated ecstasy, breathing it out slowly and refocusing with chilling intent on Bonnie. "You sealed him. You binded him to the underworld. And, when your blood is spilled, I can summon his freedom."

It wasn't about Shiri. It wasn't about the Hunters. It was all about KLAUS! They had been so off base, so wrong to believe that Honoria held the truth and the only truth. Goddammit, how stupid could she have been? "You're beyond insane." Bonnie grit out between clenched teeth, furious beyond measure. "And, I think I'm going to kill you now."

How proud would Damon be of her? And how horrified would Elena be? Not that it mattered. She took a half step towards Kiera, and smirked beyond pleased when the little bitch's eyes widened in alarm.

"You wouldn't dare." Kiera gasped. Hands fluttered. "I'm powerful. I can…"

"Get on your broom and ride out of here?" Bonnie muttered, grabbing ahold of Kiera's long hair when the girl spun to make a run for it. "Get in line, sister. After the last six weeks, life in prison or hell, the death sentence sounds pretty fucking good. Especially if I know you're quite dead." One savage pull, and Kiera's pretty little head would bounce on porcelain sinks of the bathroom – problem gone. And for good measure, she'd fry her brains out while she lay dying. Perfect.

Her arm muscles were just tightening up for that reflexive pull even as Kiera screamed, and tragically, it was clear to her that Elena and Meredith hadn't been too far away. "Bonnie!" Elena's cry was nothing short of horrified.

Bonnie snarled at the blond anyway, and savagely jerked back, using some power to crack Kiera's shields as she did so. In a perfect world, where all the fates owed her one and were paying up, Kiera would have shattered her skull right then and there. Unfortunately, the real world had the addition of Meredith in it. Meredith who grabbed onto Kiera and pulled her away from the sink edge. It didn't prevent the other blond from reeling in psychic pain, however.

"Now why did you do that?" Bonnie grumbled, her teeth still clenched in a snarl. "She's the bloody sorcerer. It's her pet Hunter tearing this town apart!"

It was no good, frick'n'frack had already decided against her. Elena grabbed Bonnie's arm, hauling her back away, and Kiera fled through the door while Meredith locked it, advising her to call the police.

Jerking her arm free from Elena, Bonnie lifted up her bag and slung it across her shoulders. Two things she was certain of, Elena wouldn't listen. And Kiera wouldn't call the cops. However, if she had to put money on it, the Hunter was already on it's way here. 'Leave them here to die, or shoo them out?' She considered her two oldest friends while they lectured her on the damage Damon had already done to her psyche. 'As if I could shoo them anywhere. Would be nice. Note to self: give a nice eulogy.'

Nimbly slipping under the outstretched arm of Meredith, she strode briskly to the door. "Do what you want." She cut into Elena's warble. "The Hunter is probably on it's way here, once Kiera summons it, and it'll kill everything in this building. I'm going home."

"You're unstable!" Was her responding farewell.

'They ain't seen nothing yet. Such a loss.' On the upside, Damon would believe her. About Kiera. Thought put the body into motion, and her brisk strides to the main aisle that led to the doors of the library were only slowed by a fraction as she grabbed her backpack sitting at a nearby carousel, a backpack containing the flash-drive with her manuscript electronically on it.

"Bonnie McCullough, just you stop right there!" Elena's strident voice had many heads bobbing up, rather like the gophers in the arcade games.

Her life was turning into a bad soap opera. That was all she could say. 'Definitely should have stayed in bed today.' Slowly turning around, Bonnie waited for the Queen and Princess of Fell's Church to approach. Meredith's expression was grim, while Elena just looked confused.

"Now is not a good time for this." Bonnie found herself muttering all the same.

"Now is the only time." Meredith bit out. "You can't just go assaulting people. It's wrong. It's illegal and…"

Bonnie shivered, a sudden premonition creeping down her spine. "And you have no idea what is going on in this town, but you're going to tell me how to act, what to think, what to do, and stuff me into the dollhouse where it's safe." She frowned, glancing around skittishly for any hint of where the danger was. The main doors were behind her, the carols around her seemed vacant, and the shelving ran perpendicularly to the main aisle, allowing her a clear view. No one was there.

But, there was a sense of danger. She could feel it, and practically taste it. 'It's close.' Turning around and looking out the doors was the obvious course of action, but she felt as if she needed to appear unaware, or unconcerned 'Ha!'

"Bonnie!" Meredith barked at her inattention, until it became clear that it wasn't pure inattention but something more. Even Elena was starting to act skittish, and if there was one thing Meredith had come to identify, a skittish Elena meant something bad was nearby. Her gaze turned back to Bonnie. "What's going on? What's wrong…"

Glass shattered overhead, and Bonnie was already moving towards Elena and Meredith while the two girls looked up. She knew, instinctively, what had just come through the skylight. "Go, go, go!" She shouted, her mind screaming for Damon while she pushed the two girls. "Take this." She instructed Elena, shoving the backpack with her precious manuscript into the other woman's arms. "Get out of here, now. Get Damon. THAT is the Hunter. It's Kiera's. Tell Damon! GO!"

As if to punctuate her point, the create swung it's scythe in a broad arc, narrowly missing the space Bonnie's neck had occupied a second before. Somehow, the threat of immediate death managed to galvanize Meredith and Elena into full cooperation. "Which way?" Meredith panted as she turned and began running up the aisle.

"Emergency exit." Bonnie pushed Elena from behind. "Go."

The creature, preternatural and strong, moved easily behind them. It would catch up, or overtake them, that Bonnie was certain of. The dark robes seemed to flow behind it as it moved, and the hooded robe combined with the scythe gave the ghastly resemblance to the mythical 'grim reaper'. 'Reap this.' She grumbled, throwing herself sideways, and grabbing a chair to hurl at the creature. The creature swiped at the chair, but it still slowed it down giving Bonnie a chance to put more distance between herself and it, and at the same time, separating herself from Elena and Meredith.

The townspeople were already running for the exits, and in the back of her mind, Bonnie realized that would potentially make this the smallest killsite the creature had ever had since it had begun it's little terror-spree. She wasn't sure, however, whether to be proud or dismayed at that fact.

'I need something else to throw at it. I need to fry Kiera's brain… that might break the spell… gah.' She tripped, her eyes shooting wide when a heavy dagger flew over her head and hit hard into a wooden bookcase. 'Nasty!'

Dying was not an option. There were two alarming possibilities. If it didn't take her head, or rip her heart out, or… some other gruesome ways of disturbing her human remains, she'd rise again. She was pretty damn sure of that. If it did kill her, Klaus would rise again. Either way, not a win-win for the town of Fell's Church.

'I need more furniture. I need to go out the main doors, and keep running. The cops will be there, and that kind of chaos will buy me plenty of time…' She glanced at the doors at the other end of the building, and then at the carols around her. 'I'm a kickass powerful witch. I can do this.'

Nothing like a rousing pep-talk. Too bad her backup dancers weren't around. Throwing herself head over heels, she spun around and summoned her powers. It was, truthfully, an impressive light show, made even more spectacular when all the furniture on the east side of the building suddenly lifted from the ground and went flying into the Hunter.

The creature flailed under the weight of the furniture, and Bonnie seized the opportunity to run like hell. Her physical endurance had improved under Damon's rigorous training, and she actually felt a momentary flash of hope that she would succeed. At least, until the creature took one of the desks she had thrown at him and tossed it back at her. Her head hit the ground hard, and for a moment she saw stars.

'Damn.' She rolled as the axe came down where her head had lay a moment before. Kicking hard, she rolled herself backwards in a somersault, and scrambled to her feet. 'Not good.' She thought, staring at green glowing eyes. 'Very not good.' Her gaze shifted to the axe that was raising for another likely fatal swing. 'His primary weapon.'

Where the thought came from, she didn't know, but the power moved readily. Ruthlessly, she tapped into the powers that lay submerged below the town and channeled it for her own purposes. This was her town, she was it's guardian, it was hers to use… so damn it, she would. In magical terms, she knew it was called a Levin-bolt, but didn't care. All she cared was that it destroyed the damn axe, or scythe, or labrys… pick your name, but the sharp bladed thing that had haunted many of her dreams.

The head of the axe shattered under the bolt, and the effect must have hurt given the unearthly screech the creature made. Bonnie didn't care, she spun and run.

-----------------------------------------

Stefan was clutching the passenger side door like his life depended on it as Damon took a corner hard. His brother's face was set in a hard grim expression, and he knew that asking him to slow down wasn't worth the breath. One moment, Damon had been sardonically relaying the story of the past few weeks and the next bolting in alarm for Bonnie's rental car.

Something, somewhere, had happened. And most likely to Bonnie.

All Stefan knew for certain was that if he hadn't been a vampire, and hadn't consumed some of the human blood Damon had been keeping in Bonnie's fridge, he wouldn't have been fast enough to get into the damn car before Damon had peeled away. He could only pray he was vampire enough to take on whatever they found at their final destination.

"That's the town centre!" He suddenly exclaimed as the clock-tower came into sight. "What…"

People were running, screaming, away from the library, and reaching out with his senses, he could feel the panic. Pushing beyond the people, he focused on the library and felt his body chill. "What IS that?" He breathed.

"The Hunter." Damon growled.

"That's what you've been fighting?"

Damon snorted. "Fighting would mean we'd actual dealt with each other hand to hand. I don't stand a chance against this creature. All we've managed to do is escape dying."

Well, double damn. This was not good. Damon was pragmatic against most situations, but still arrogantly confident in his own predatory attributes. Stefan wasn't foolish enough to believe that in a true battle between each other that Damon wouldn't kick his ass, so he knew if Damon didn't feel he could take on this creature, he himself didn't stand a chance.

And if Damon couldn't fight it, then Bonnie was in infinitely more danger than could be readily measured. His eyes widened spotting Elena running away from the library. "Stop the car!" He barked.

Whether Damon was listening to him, or had seen the girls himself, he sent the car screeching to a stop, threw the door open and ran like a bat out of hell for the main library doors.

"Damon, don't!" Elena screamed, reaching for Stefan even as she protested at Damon's actions. Her face was white, and body shook hard.

He ignored her, and kept running.

"Get in the car," Stefan urged.

"Bonnie said Kiera…" Elena gasped, fighting her boyfriend. "She said Kiera is controlling it."

It didn't seem possible, but he would worry about that later. His first priority was Elena and Meredith's safety. "Get in the car." He reiterated.

"We have to find Kiera." Meredith argued.

"We will. Get in the car."

"Or I could save you the trouble." Kiera's dulcet voice sweet interrupted the trio. "I'm right here."

Stefan spun around, eyes widening as he spotted the blond with Matt hovering expressionlessly behind her. Her smile was vacuous, and eyes malicious, and in the blink of a moment, as an alien power curled around him and froze his body to the spot, he realized Bonnie had been right all along.

It took more power than he liked to move his head, and more power than he had to contact his brother. Not that it mattered, because Matt's precious girlfriend had grabbed Damon in her power too, and left him frozen on the stairs to the library. "I can't have you interrupt. My pet is just about to kill Bonnie, and I'd rather she didn't accidentally survive again. Thank you."

"W..why." Elena ground out.

"Power. Immortality. Revenge." Kiera shrugged. "Take your pick. I tried to free Klaus using magic, but your little friend is far stronger than I think any of you, including her, realize. It took me a year to find one of these Hunters, and months to wrap enough coercion spells around it to control it. It's still fighting me, but once Bonnie's dead I won't need it anymore. And Klaus will be easy to free."

Stefan closed his eyes. Klaus. That was why the construct had looked so real. Kiera had some sort of connection to Klaus. Dammit.

"Follow." She ordered, her power moving them like puppets towards the library. "We want centre stage seats when my Hunter brings out Bonnie's head."

Elena was whimpering, and Meredith wasn't even capable of that. But, all of them were struck with the horror of this moment, and the terror that came in their futile efforts to free themselves. Like automatons, they walked behind Kiera and she staged them on the stairs like actors in some bizarre play.

Damon was furious, and fighting her spell hard. His powers gave him partial protection and resistence to her complete control, but not enough to do anything. There was a burning fire in his eyes that promised a great deal of bloodletting if he could just get his hands on the blond witch. Stefan was inclined to help.

Kiera danced up the stairs until she could see through the glass doors. "Oooh, she's feisty." She laughed.

'Bonnie.' Stefan closed his eyes. 'Oh God, please. I don't deserve your attention or help, but she does. Please help.'

Damon had managed to move a foot. It wasn't much, but Stefan clung to his brother's efforts. They needed to disable Kiera. And then, maybe they could stop this creature.

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Her lip was bleeding from her biting it, but she needed the pain to focus on. The Hunter was moving again, and she had seconds to get to the doors and out to freedom, precious little seconds. Just because his precious axe was destroyed, didn't mean his claws couldn't finish the job, or one of the other knives that it seemed to carry.

'Run, run…' Bonnie chanted silently. Her eyes fixed on the prize. Movement there went unnoticed, until a flash of blond caught her eye. 'Elen… Kiera!' She was so close to the doors, she could see the drama unfolding on the steps, and her sensitivity to power let her 'see' what she had done to her friends. 'Damn. Oh damn.'

Pain lanced through her, tearing into her abdomen like raw fire and her world spun. 'Wha…?' Blood blossomed across the front of her shirt, and she looked down to see the metal shaft of the axe poking through. 'Oh, shit.'

Kiera was dancing in glee, sunlight shining down on her bright head. 'I have to help them…' Bonnie thought faintly, the pain and trauma slowing her down physically not mentally. 'Don't have time. Seconds.'

It was like being in the clearing all over again, with seconds stretching eternally before her and yet not lasting long enough. Klaus dancing about in glee, throwing lightening to disable Damon and Stefan… throwing lightening. Throwing lightening.

Her hand reached out, in Kiera's general direction, but her powers stretched beyond summoning something from the clear sky that was impossible under the laws of nature. It was churning in the ether, so much energy, so much power, all it took was the grace of the Gods to free it. Godstrike. Lightening strike. Something no witch, no vampire, no creature could survive. Something that would destroy Kiera.

It flashed even as she felt the Hunter's hand close around her falling body, and it's long nails bite deep into her flesh. She rode power, however, and her body was beyond all consequence. It flashed as she surrendered her flesh, it flashed as the heavens roared, and it moved true to her intent, with her standing position as the terminus.

Kiera hadn't stood a chance. And as Bonnie slumped to the ground, the Hunter preparing to rip her apart, neither did it. Nor the library.

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"Ooh," Kiera laughed. "He's staked her. And now he's going to rip her apart!" She smiled happily at Damon. "Does this hurt you?" She asked with callous curiosity. "I know you worked awfully hard to keep her alive."

Her attention turned back, lips parted in anticipation of what was to come and hands clasped together anxiously.

Damon howled, his frustration painful to everyone.

And then, they were free. The lightening had flashed so close, that the air was scorched with ozone, and burnt human hair. Stefan spun around, but Elena, Meredith and Matt were slumped unharmed on the ground. Damon flew past and through the library doors, only to fly backwards in a backlash of fire. "NO!" He roared.

Stefan moved then, grabbing his brother and fighting with all his strength to hold him still. "You can't." He shouted. "Do you want to die too?"

The library went up in flames faster than he could have believed. So many old books, so much old wood just ripe tinder for a little bit of flame. 'Bonnie. Oh God, Bonnie.' In so many ways, they had failed their red-headed friend. And he had no illusions about who had slain Kiera. It hadn't been any of them. The lightening had come from a clear blue sky and shot right through the library doors.

Damon struggled hard, but as the roof came in, slumped in surrender. "I promised her." He whispered. "I promised she'd make it through."

Stefan bowed his head, forehead resting against the back of his brother's head as Damon dropped to his knees. He'd never know what the connection between his brother and Bonnie had been, but he knew it was unlike anything he'd ever seen in his brother before. And it hurt to see it shattered before it had a chance to bring some measure of warmth to his brother's solitary life. Even as a friend, Bonnie would have been the first of such for Damon.

Elena was weeping openly, but still in possession of common sense that had them all stepping away from the burning building, and letting the authorities that had finally decided to show up do their work.

All in all, it was a very sad little group that found their way across the street, huddled on the curb distraught at the death of a dear and very special friend.


	13. Epilogue

Epilogue

**_...The Path less Taken..._**

by Anya (aka Evilgoddss)

He had packed his bag that night, only hours after fire had been put out and the building searched for remains. None had been found, but somehow, after everything that had happened Damon had been expecting that. So, he had patiently waited until Stefan had left him alone for a few hours, and quickly gone through Bonnie's apartment and packed.

His hand had wavered over her diary for a single moment, and something had moved him to shove it into the bag as well. It wasn't of any use to Stefan or Elena, and frankly, some of what Bonnie had written about regarding the past year would have hurt his brother and his friends terribly. Perhaps it was an act of kindness that had him remove it, he didn't know.

It was fortunate Bonnie had no pets, and truthfully, her family and friends would have an easy time of it packing up the remains of her life in this apartment. She had lived a rather spartan existence. In time perhaps more 'junk' could have found it's way into her world, but this had been an apartment, not quite a home. For him, it had been a shelter in a storm, but he couldn't recall in over ten weeks ever hearing Bonnie call the apartment 'home'.

The remaining blood from the fridge, enough to see him through several weeks, was carefully packed into a cooler he'd found hidden in the spare bedroom. There was no point in leaving it behind. Her family would have had too many questions, and why let a perfectly good source of blood go to waste? He still preferred blood from the source, but was pragmatic enough to make use of even bagged processed blood. At least, make use of it until it was gone.

All in all, his packing was expedient, and in the hours just before dawn, he quietly locked the door to the apartment, and crept down the stairs to the waiting car below. He'd traded in the Corvette that had died in this town weeks ago, and while the car below wasn't quite his style, the Toyota Celica would get him the hell out of dodge. Europe was sounding good. Home, was sounding better.

Packing the trunk, he threw some blankets in the back-seat, and started the engine. The streets of Fell's Church were still, but he moved slowly to draw no attention. He had two last errands to run before leaving this town, and he wanted them done before the sun came up.

Mrs. Flower's old boarding house looked even more neglected in the weeks following her death, and still he found himself looking up at the old building with nostalgia has he parked there. This town had cost him a great deal, and yet he was intending never to loose sight of these memories. He'd both lost, and found his brother here. Found and lost the 'love' of his life. Twice, if you counted Katherine. And he'd found and lost the only friend he'd known in hundreds of years.

Leaving the car, he walked back to the rose bush, and smirked to see the simple subtle marker Bonnie had put up over the place where Mrs. Flowers earthly remains lay. "This is goodbye." He told the old lady, as if her ghost was listening. "I don't know what will happen in this town now, but hopefully St. Stefan can keep the peace. I'm done."

He offered a few moments of silent, a show of respect that he didn't willingly give to many. She'd been a little kooky, but in the end, had provided him with shelter and protection. Sadly, her protection hadn't been enough to save her life.

A layer of dust had settled on the window-sills, and Damon took all this in as his eyes swept over the property. Satisfied by the stillness around him, he shifted into the body of a wolf and once again took off into the forest.

It took a bit of time, but not a lot, for him to find the clearing where they had faced down Klaus. Circling around, he felt for any sign of disturbance, any indication that Klaus had been freed from his magical prison. The land lay peacefully, power thrumming below the surface but not with malevolent intent. The dead of Fell's Church had not lost their prisoner, and as far as Damon could tell, would not lose him any time soon. All was good.

He took a moment to sit and replay the moments of that night in his mind, seeing the tiny redhead bent over his brother's fallen body and arguing with him. She'd been so stubborn, so tenacious and yet, she had done the impossible. For while it had indeed been Elena's army of the dead that had subdued Klaus, it was Bonnie who had been the mortal body standing against him while summoning Elena's host. She, a mere mortal, had stood against an Original and lived in defiance of a prophecy.

The girl had guts, even then.

The wolf huffed a sigh, and stood up, shaking his coat out once before setting off onto the path again, this time on the trail that would lead to the cemetery and Honoria's tomb. He veered off slightly, taking the river path that would lead underground and followed it back to the catacombs below. Katherine's voice taunted him in his mind, as the memories ran through him, and once again he felt echoes of the pain from that terribly battle.

He could see the spot where he had crawled from the river, gravely wounded by The Hunter. The ground was disturbed, and the new coating of dust not enough to obscure the spot his wet body had lay. Or to hide Bonnie's footsteps when she had found him. How had she carried him out of there?

Still he moved forward, following the curve of the underground river just a little more.

He'd come out of his stupor at the library as the firemen had emerged and announced there were no bodies. The fire had been put out quickly, the emergency sprinklers inside the library doing their job to protect the valuables there. Even Honoria's diary had survived.

Stefan and Elena hadn't done the math, but he had. The Hunter had escaped, and had taken Bonnie's body with him. But why? Kiera's spell should have ended with her death. Why take Bonnie unless the creature intended to raise Klaus itself.

He would have given a lot to know where Kiera had found the creature, but he would cheerfully have put money on it that it hadn't been around Fell's Church. The convergence of power lines that drew so many creatures here had an upside to it. Most of those creatures were not the truly powerful ones. Creatures that would feel the constant itch from those ley lines.

Not that Damon liked to discount his own standing in the hierarchy of things-that-went-bump-in-the-night, but he wasn't even mid-way on that totem pole. Poor Stefan was barely scraping the ground floor. There were bigger, badder things and he and his brother weren't in those classes.

No, if Damon reasoned rightly, what had sent that creature homicidally out of control, outside of Kiera's coercion spells, was the itch of the convergence. It had reacted with something akin to an allergic reaction to the power flows in the area and had lashed out to 'scratch' the itch.

The only true way to relieve itself would have been to leave Fell's Church, and prior to Kiera's death, that hadn't been an option, but after? Damon had no doubt that the Hunter had survived the lightening strike just fine – it was a creature made by the Gods to fight evil, after all. God-summoned lightening was probably mother's milk to it. Even a direct hit shouldn't have destroyed it. Maybe, just maybe, wounded it, but nothing final.

But why take Bonnie? Klaus, he had already established was still firmly under lock and key. It could have dumped Bonnie's body in the library and escaped on it's own.

Damon rounded the river again, finally approaching the nexus of the power lines, where they all came together in the spot below Honoria's tomb. It was a tiny niche in the cavern walls, one that he doubted anyone save Honoria had noticed. A little innocuous place where power seethed as it came together in what some would perceive as a maelstrom, but Damon saw as a kind of 'waterfall'.

And there, in amongst all that energy, all that supernatural power, lay the still body of Bonnie McCullough. The rod that had impaled her was gone, though her clothing told the story in blood stains as to how severe that injury had been. She wasn't blackened from lightening, or burnt by fire, and it was evident that her body had been laid out with care in the little niche. The care of the Hunter who worked for The Gods. A Hunter that probably had been horrified by it's actions and sought to fix things.

He shifted back to human form and walked closer to the niche, studying her still face. Either she was dead, or in stasis. He was hopeful that it was the later. He feared it was the first.

Power stung at his hands, but it was of no consequence. He gently lifted her up and out of the point of nexus, cradling her close to his chest. "Bonnie." He called both audibly and with his mind, feeding power to her like he had so many weeks ago. "Wake up."

Moving away from the nexus, he listened for signs of life, his face breaking into a true smile when her heart sounded in a gentle beating rhythm. "Wake up." He called again, feeding more power into her.

Her pulse picked up speed, and eyes opened hazily, golden shining eyes that shone with confusion, disorientation and the physical manifestation of her own natural powers. "That's a good girl." He praised her as if a child. "Wake up."

Her hand moved down to her stomach, feeling for the wound she last recalled, her most recent memories being the first to come to mind. "How?" _How had they survived? What happened to the Hunter? Why was she alive?_

"You did it." Damon set her down on the ground and crouched beside her. "Do you remember?"

Her eyes closed, her forehead furrowing in concentration. "Lightening."

He nodded.

"Kiera?"

"Fried. She smelled awful." He chuckled. "For future reference, I don't like boiled blood."

"Noted."

"The others?"

"They're fine." He paused. "Everyone thinks you're dead." Dark eyes watched for her response with great care.

Bonnie sighed, "I was. I know I was. Dead, that is. For a moment or two. Maybe longer, I don't know."

"That's twice in one year." He poked at her gently with one finger. "You should cut back, I'm sure the surgeon-general frowns upon it."

"Probably does. If everyone were to job dead, there wouldn't be a need for a surgeon general." She yawned broadly, her hand straying up to rub at her eyes. "So. Now what?"

Damon watched her, amused by her kittenish behaviour. Little movements, sluggish and awkward. Sleepy laziness. She wasn't dead, but she was one exhausted little witch all the same. "That, I suppose, is up to you."

"Hmm?"

"You're not…" He searched for the right word.

"Responsible for this town anymore. I know. Death is life's way of saying you're fired, after all." She wiggled closer to him, her hands rubbing up and down her arms to generate warmth. "I can't stay here though. Not now. Something is different. I don't think I'm exactly human anymore." She sighed softly, but slowly a teasing smirk crossed her lips. She looked up at him with mischief glimmering in her eyes. "And it's all your fault."

One eyebrow arched in an impassive face, but his eyes remained curious.

"I was dead," She supplied in amongst another yawn. "You get answers, it seems, once you bite it. The Hunter interfered with my death, though. I was going to rise up as a vampire which was entirely your fault. But, then it brought me back to life in other ways."

He waited, she'd continue in her own time.

Lazy eyes looked up at him. "I forget the exact words, but I'm straddling a line. I'm not mortal, and I'm not quite immortal. But, I do remember that it's really all your fault."

"My sincerest apologies for saving your life the first time."

She smirked. "You're forgiven."

"Thank you." Damon retorted dryly, slid out of his jacket and wrapping it around her. It was cold down here, and whether or not she was susceptible to life threatening diseases was a topic for another time. "Now what?"

Bonnie smiled, her fingers clutching at the opening of the jacket and snuggling close. "I guess I leave town and start a new life. I don't want to be around Elena and Meredith now. There's too much between us, and now they'll be watching me cross-eyed. I'm not the same person I was a few years ago. I don't really want to be her again. But, I don't know how to start over."

In four centuries the thought had never crossed his mind as it did now. And he'd never had so much hope buried in it as he felt right now. He moved, dropping in front of her and closing the jacket with his own hands before nudging her chin up. "How about you come with me? I'm yearning for home. Italy would be a nice place for you to start, at least for a few years." He shrugged depreciatingly. "I know of a nice villa, it's an old family property, has a vineyard – a little neglected over a couple of centuries. I'm certain the owner wouldn't mind a long-term houseguest."

Her brilliant smile was answer enough.

Fini


End file.
